


Three Simple Words

by Nova_Fearnewood



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Episode: s01e22 Beginning of the End, F/M, Five Times, Fluff, Love, Marriage Proposal, Post season finale, Science Babies, Surprises, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nova_Fearnewood/pseuds/Nova_Fearnewood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or five times Fitz told Simmons that he loved her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There's Only One Way...

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own a thing.

* * *

_**There's Only One Way...** _

* * *

The bright lights blinded Leo Fitz as he blinked a few times and took in his surroundings.

He was laying in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

His head, arm, and ribs hurt and he winced as the room around him came into focus and his hearing started coming back to him.

Thank God he could still hear, he would've gone completely insane if the last thing he had heard in his life was Jemma screaming as though someone was torturing her before everything had gone black. It was a wonder he hadn't gone insane during his coma because her screams were haunting him.

They would always haunt him. 

Various monitors and machines beeped and hummed around him, their soft noises barely audible over the gentle music that he realized was part of Jemma's playlist for whenever they were working in the lab together.

_Jemma._

He looked around and his heart almost stopped when he saw Jemma laying in the hospital bed next to him.

Her eyes were closed and she was motionless on the bed, lying flat on her back, her head facing straight up at the ceiling, her petite hands folded over her stomach.

His stomach twisted as her position and physical state reminded him of a corpse lying in a coffin. She didn't look like she was breathing. Her skin had paled so it was only several shades tanner than the crisp white sheets on the bed and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her cheekbones were more prominent and her hair had lost its shine. 

"Jemma?", he barely rasped, his heart breaking at the sight of her.

She didn't stir, driving home the grief that had seized him. 

He had given her his life, had every intention of dying for her and now, because of some sick miracle, he was going to cheat death and Jemma would be the one to die. 

He couldn't live without her.

A painful sob ripped through him as a nurse entered the room and told him to calm down.

Everything hurt and he ignored the pain,  calling out to Jemma again, his voice now stronger than the whisper it once was.

Then Jemma's eyes flew open and she was there; awake, alive, and at his side.

He cried with relief as she grasped his good hand and peppered kisses across his forehead, whispering the words "You're alive." over and over again.

The nurse removed the oxygen mask and replaced it with a nasal cannula before placing a water bottle with a straw in it nearby and retreating from the room.

Jemma held the bottle as he took small sips.

He wanted to tell her so many things, like how fortunate he was to have her in his life and how sorry he was for trying to be a martyr when he knew how badly his death would have hurt her.

 "Don't say a word,", she whispered when he had drunk his fill, "I want to tell you something."

He nodded silently and she broke down in tears again.

"Leopold Fitz... You brave, noble, selfless, silly man... You really thought I would let you go that easy?", she pressed a kiss to the back of his good hand before continuing, "I almost lost you... You almost left me..."

  "Jemma...", he whispered, lifting his good hand to her cheek to brush her tears away, his hand lingering there to cup her cheek and Jemma's hand held it to her cheek. "About what happened in the pod... what I said..."

He paused to look at Jemma, who was still grasping his hand.

"What you said about me being more than your best friend in the world, was it true?", she asked, "I'm not doubting you, I just know that situations like the one we were in has  often evoked the need to do something like, well, reaching out to whoever is closest, in this case I was the one you reached out to."

He shook his head and cringed internally when Jemma looked upset.

"No, it wasn't like that at all... Jemma, I meant every word of what I said.", he replied quickly.

"But you didn't say  _it_ because you didn't want to make things weird if I didn't feel the same.", she added.

He nodded and asked,

"So do you... you know, feel the same way?"

She kissed his knuckles and whispered, "Oh Leo, of course I do." 

Hearing her say his first name in such an endearing way gave him the courage he needed to tell her how he felt, how he had always felt for her. 

"I love you, Jemma." , he murmured. 

She leaned forward and kissed his forehead and his nose, pressing her forehead to his to gaze into his eyes.

He searched her eyes for anything but the truth and found nothing but the truth.

He closed his eyes and leaned in, brushing his lips tentatively over hers, and smiling as she leaned into the kiss. 

Nothing would come between them again, not Grant Ward or Hydra or even death could keep them apart.

They broke apart and Jemma whispered against his lips.

"I love you Leo."

* * *

 

  


	2. To Say...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly three years have passed since the day that Fitz woke up and told Jemma Simmons that he loved her.  
> In those years, they've been going steady and now, on their three year anniversary, Fitz has something very important to ask Jemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your constant support!

* * *

_**To Say...** _

* * *

 

To anyone else, today was a normal day in the lab with Fitz and Simmons tinkering away and talking about complex sciences, but for Leopold Fitz, today was anything but normal.

It was the third anniversary of the day when Fitz woke up from his coma and the third anniversary of the day that they decided to become something more than friends.

The BUS was parked on the campus of SHIELD's Sci-Tech Academy for the week as Director Coulson would be partaking in the many traditions leading up to the graduation ceremony for the class of 2017. 

Tonight, Leo and Jemma were supposed to attend the formal Graduate's Ball as alumni and honored guests, but Leo planned to take Jemma around the campus and revisit places that held many memories of their first years together after they grew bored of the ball. 

They would go to the fountain outside the administrative building and stand at the very place where they were introduced thirteen years ago, go to the Boiler Room and sit at the table where they celebrated their newly forged partnership, and go to the library and spend some time in the corner where they shared their late nights of studying.

Leo planned to leave early and take Jemma up to the hill with the most stunning view of the campus. This hill was the same place where they sat after their own Graduate's Ball and graduation ceremony and this was the place where they decided to both take job offers at SHIELD's Sci Ops facility and become long-term partners and it was also the hill where the both of them decided to accept Agent Coulson's offer and join his team.    

This would be the hill where Leo would kneel down and propose to Jemma.

He had already called her father and asked for his blessing, and her father had been more than happy to give it to him. Leo's mum had mailed her late mother's antique engagement ring to him a few weeks earlier along with a long letter about how happy she was for him. 

The ring was hidden away in his sock drawer and he had practiced kneeling down and saying the words "will you marry me" out loud so that they became familiar.

Tonight was the night.

"Leo, could you please pass me those tweezers?", Jemma asked as she glanced up from her work.

Leo put down the soldering gun he was using and passed the tweezer kit to her.

"Here you go...", he said and turned back to his work, trying to keep his hands steady.

"What are you working on?", she asked.

"Oh... nothing really...", he replied, "I'm just working on your wristwatch."

"How is that coming along?", she asked.

"I should be done in an hour or so."

"Alright then.", she replied, "I have to go upstairs, Skye promised me that we'd get ready together.", Jemma said as she cleaned up her workplace.

Leo turned around as his girlfriend draped her lab coat over her chair.

"Jemma?"

"Yes?", she asked, pausing at the door.

"Would it be too much to ask for if I asked you to wear some comfy shoes? I hear there's going to be a clear sky tonight and I wanted to walk around campus with you and spend some time alone with you, after all, it _is_ our three year anniversary and you know how I feel about formal gatherings..."

Jemma smiled and replied,

"Oh Leo, I think that's a lovely idea, and I have the perfect pair of shoes in mind."

"Jemma!", Skye called from upstairs in a pained voice, "I- ugh- need a hand here."

Jemma looked at Leo with a smile and sighed, "Duty calls... I'll see you later.", and disappeared up the stairs.

Leo tinkered some more and then decided it was time to get ready. 

He showered, shaved, and tried in vain to tidy his unruly curls, eventually giving up.

Jemma liked his curly hair anyway.

He went back to his bunk and changed into his formal attire.

This was going to be the most important night of his life and he was starting to feel nausea and nerves creeping into his being.

_What if something went wrong? What if he dropped the ring? What if it rains? What if she says no?_

He straightened his tie, smoothed down his kilt, pulled on his regulation doublet jacket, and fastened the fly plaid on his left shoulder with the brooch that had been in the family for ages. 

He took the engagement ring from his sock drawer and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket, automatically feeling like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

 Soon it was time to head off to the ball and Leo paced by the lowered cargo ramp, waiting for the ladies with Director Coulson, Triplett, and Ward (who had rejoined the team last fall after counseling. He had returned a changed man, one who had no desire to remain a specialist, and he had told Coulson that he would like to go to school and become a veterinarian when his time with SHIELD was over. He and Skye had started over and things were going well between them).

"Fitz, you'll wear yourself out if you keep pacing like that...", Ward stated.

Leo stopped pacing and focused on solving huge mathematical problems in his head to calm himself down. He had almost solved a massive problem when the door opened at the top of the stairs and he looked up.

"May, you look stunning...", Coulson complimented as May walked down in a black high-necked silk and lace gown.

Skye was next and she wore a dark red dress that hugged her like a glove with a slit that ran from mid thigh to the floor and her presence left Ward speechless.

Then Jemma appeared at the top of the stairs and the world around Leo ceased to exist.

She wore a light blue gown that hugged her body and flared out around her lower thighs into waves of flowing material. She wore a gauzy wrap about her shoulders, her hair was piled atop her head and fastened with many jeweled clips.

She reached him at the landing and he held out his hand to her.

"Jemma, you look beautiful...", was all he could say.

His nerves were gone and all that remained was the warm feeling that spread through him at the sight of Jemma blushing as he escorted her to the edge of the ramp and across the grounds to the building where the ball was being held.

"You look dashing...", she murmured as they entered the ballroom.

They walked around as a pair, making small talk with their former professors and congratulating the soon-to-be graduates.

Professor Vaughn asked them if they were married yet and Leo forced a chuckle as Jemma laughed softly and replied.

"Oh no Professor, Leo and I are only dating."

They walked round the room a few more times before they somehow ended up in each others arms, swaying to a love song.

Soon after that, Jemma said the magic words.

"Do you want to take that walk?"

Leo steadied himself and they left the ball.

The administrative building was right across the way and they walked and talked until they found themselves standing in the place where they met.

"Leo, is this the same spot where--"

"we met? Yeah... this is the spot. It's hard to believe that we've known each other for thirteen years...", he replied.

"I still remember that day.", Jemma said, sitting on the edge of the fountain, "I was so scared, and then I met you and... everything changed..."

"I didn't know it then, but I had just met the love of my life.", Leo replied.

They proceeded to the Boiler Room and entered the secret bar. 

They were given a heroes welcome and then one of the bartenders waved off the swarm of students who were clamoring for autographs.

Apparently their renown had grown with time.

They sat at the table where they forged their partnership and Jemma's eyes lit up.

"Oh Leo, this is where we drank to our success and where we became FitzSimmons...", she blushed as he nodded.

"Do you want anything while we're here?", he asked.

"No thanks.", she replied. "Gosh, this brings back memories...", she said as she looked around the room.

"I remember coming here with you when your mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, you were so scared and I brought you here to help clear your head."

She nodded, "It worked too. I remember being stood up here and you showed up because you had a feeling that things weren't going well." 

"Yes! And that one time when we went to club night..."

"and got so drunk that we woke up here the next day."

They were laughing and the next thing they knew, there was a large influx of students, no doubt those that just got out of evening lectures and the Boiler Room got uncomfortably crowded. 

"Let's go...", Jemma suggested and they left the bar. 

"I wish we could go back to our Lab and dorm rooms, most of our fondest memories were made there.", Jemma stated as they walked.

"I know a place that holds a good bit of memories..." , Leo replied and they walked up the stairs to the library. 

The place was nearly empty and FitzSimmons moved quietly through the shelves until they got to their corner. 

Their corner was really a secluded alcove tucked away between two shelves stacked full of dusty old philosophy tomes. 

They slipped into the alcove and flipped on the dim wall lamp. 

"We spent all our late nights here.", he said, "I remember stumbling upon this place and finding you in it shortly after we met."

"Honestly, when I first started liking you in a non-platonic way, I dreamed of how perfect kissing you back here would be.", Jemma confessed.

"Care to make that dream a reality?", Leo asked as he leaned in and captured her lips in a kiss, slowly deepening it when Jemma make a soft noise of pleasure. 

"Leo, we should stop before we get caught...", Jemma said and got to her feet.

"There's just one place left to go...", Leo said as he took her hand and led her out of the library and towards the path that lead up to their hill.

They hiked up together and the nervous tension filled Leo with every step.

_Almost there, soon it'll be now or never, get ready, just a few meters left..._

They reached the top of the hill and Jemma gasped in awe.

"This view will never cease to amaze me...", Jemma breathed. "We came up here whenever we needed to get away."

"It's where we promised to go to Sci Ops as FitzSimmons.", he stated, trying his best to keep his voice even.

"It's also where we decided to join Coulson's so-called flying circus..."

It was now or never.

"Jemma, I need to tell  you something.", He began.

"What is it?", Jemma asked, focusing solely on Leo.

"This school is where we met, here we became FitzSimmons, I found a lifelong friend in you and we have grown so close over the years. It was our genius that brought us together but sometimes I think it was our energies that found each other. Both of us were from different places and we had different interests, but we somehow just meshed well with each other. When I first laid eyes on you, I didn't think you'd become such a big part of my life. I didn't know that I would fall in love. Before we met each other, I thought I would never meet someone I could relate to, someone who went through the same stuff I went through, and I never thought I'd feel at home in the States. Then you came along and understood me. You came along and made wherever you were feel like home to me... I guess it's true what they say, home _is_ where the heart is. Jemma, I admire you for your courage and selflessness. You risked your life to save me from that virus, you caught that dendrotoxin grenade, and you saved me from a watery grave. I owe my life to you. I didn't realize that you were the one until I almost lost you for good. After that, I wanted to do everything in my power to protect you from harm. Three years ago, you brought me back, for that, I am eternally grateful."

Leo paused as Jemma smiled, tears welling up in her honey colored eyes.

"I know that no energy is created and none is destroyed, I just hope that, someday when our energy moves on, it breaks that rule. I want our energies to become one... or else my energy will search for yours forever and it will find you, burning in the brightest star in the sky, much like it did when you became the light of my life..."

He took a deep breath and knelt down and pulled out the ring.

"Jemma, I can't imagine a more perfect way to spend eternity than with you by my side. Will you marry me?"

   Jemma burst into tears and nodded yes.

"Yes. Yes, yes! Of course I'll marry you, you wonderful man..."

She held out her hand and he slipped the ring on.

It was a perfect fit.

He got up off his knees and Jemma embraced him tightly, murmuring yes over and over again, scattering kisses across Leo's brow  before kissing him on the lips.

He murmured "I love you..." between kisses and his betrothed began chanting "I love you." softly as they moved as one.

* * *

 

 

 


	3. Those Three Words...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wedding day has finally arrived!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your support!  
> I own nothing.  
> Things get a little bit adult-y at the end, but I tried to keep it PG-13.  
> Any mistakes are my own!  
> Enjoy!

* * *

**_Those Three Words..._ **

* * *

Leo Fitz was dreaming of Jemma Simmons laughing and smiling.

It was one of the best recurring dreams that he had of his fiancée and each time it happened, he was constantly reminded of how angelic she was and of how lucky he was to have her as his bride-to-be. 

"Fitz...", came a male voice through the light melody of Jemma's laughter.

He squinted as the dream began to slip away from him and he hugged his pillow tighter.

"Hey, Fitz... c'mon buddy, it's time to wake up...", came a different male voice, followed by someone jostling his shoulder.

He let the dream go reluctantly and opened his eyes before yelping and pushing his pillow away from his body.

"Bloody hell!"

His groomsmen were leaning over his bed and they took a step back when he jolted awake. 

Trip chuckled and said, "Morning Sleeping Beauty..." as Ward and Coulson cracked smiles. 

Leo went to sit up in bed but he found that any sudden movement would be heralded in with a wave of nausea.

"What happened last night? How much did I drink?", he asked as he took a few sips from the glass of water that Coulson handed him.

"You didn't drink at all aside from some wine at dinner.", Ward replied. 

"Then why do I feel like I'm going to throw up?"

"Probably because you'll be a married man by this time tomorrow.", Coulson replied simply.

"We'll leave so you can get up and do your daily routine. We'll start getting ready at noon. Remember to stay away from the East Wing, that's been dubbed as the bridal zone by Skye and she says that she'll chase you off with a broom if you get too close. She doesn't want you having an unlucky marriage because you saw the bride before the wedding.", Ward said.

"Where will you be?", Leo asked as they left.

"The bridal zone...", Coulson replied.

"Hey, I thought we couldn't go there...", he said.

Trip grinned and replied, "Skye said that the  _groom_ couldn't go there, she didn't say that the  _groomsmen_ weren't allowed... besides, I think Jemma's cousin Amelia has a thing for me..."

The three men left the room and Leo was left to lay there in bed a while longer.

He stared at the ceiling.

"I'm getting married today.", he said out loud to no one at all.

In that moment, those words truly sank in. In less than ten hours, he and Jemma would no longer be Mr. Leopold Fitz and Miss Jemma Simmons.

They would be Mr. Leopold and Mrs. Jemma Fitz-Simmons. 

Dr. Leopold and Dr. Jemma Fitz-Simmons...

Agents Leopold and Jemma Fitz-Simmons...

They would be husband and wife.

Leo rolled those titles around in his mind as he dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a plain grey t-shirt.

He decided to eat and take a walk about the grounds to pass the time until noon, then he would go back to the West Wing of Dunrobin Castle so he could shower, shave, and get dressed in his formal wear.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he smiled at the text Jemma had sent him.

_Hello love. How are you spending your morning?_

He texted her back.

_Going for a stroll about the gardens by myself, wish you could come with me but it's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding._

He pulled on his jumper, went outside, and began walking through a grove of trees. The gravel crunched under his shoes and he inhaled deeply.

The place smelled like moss, rain, earth, and a crisp scent that he couldn't quite describe. 

He was glad that Jemma wanted to be married in the stunningly beautiful Highland region instead of settling for a wedding in the city. 

It was a long trip for Leo's family to travel from Glasgow to Dunrobin and it was even further for Jemma's family to travel from Sheffield and southern England. Director Coulson had used his friendship with Tony and Pepper Stark to sway the multi-billionaire couple to pay for the travel fees (of course Tony Stark had been generous enough to pay for everyone's hotel expenses too, after all, half a million dollars to him was nothing, especially after Leo and Jemma sold the Mouse Hole patent rights to Stark Industries). Tony and Pepper called it a wedding gift.

Jemma texted back.

_I wish I could be with you too. It was quite the lonely last seven nights without you._

He smiled a little as he recalled how she had huffed in agitation when they learned that it was a Simmons family tradition to have the bride and groom sleep in separate bedrooms every night during the week leading up to the wedding day.

_I missed you too._

He walked through the trees until he got to a hidden gazebo and he entered the wooden structure and looked out over the picturesque North Sea.

_Skye wants me to start getting ready, I'll see you in a few hours. I love you._

Leo looked at his watch and sighed. He had to get back to the castle.

_I love you too._

He jogged back to the castle and slowed as he looked up at the open windows of the East Wing.

He heard Skye laughing at something that Amelia had said and then he heard the guys saying their goodbyes as May shooed them from the room. As each man said goodbye, they also told Jemma how beautiful she looked; Coulson even told her that she looked like royalty.

He ran to the West Wing and was in the shower when his groomsmen returned.

"Fitz, we saw Simmons... I think it's safe to say that you are the luckiest man in the world, I mean, she looks like an absolute goddess.", Trip said.

Leo smiled as he finished shaving and replied, "She always looked like a goddess to me..."

He didn't try to tame his curls, knowing that they would just go everywhere anyway.

He pulled on his formal wear and his kilt made out of the Fitz family's tartan and then went to help the guys with their plain black kilts and unmarked fly plaids and boutonnieres.

Leo went to fasten on his own fly plaid and began freaking out when he couldn't find it, eventually texting his mum to see if she had it.

His mum entered the room a moment later with the fly plaid in hand along with a box.

"It's a Fitz family tradition for the father of the groom to pin on the fly plaid, but I suppose I'll have to suffice.", she said as she opened the box and lifted a large antique brooch from it.

The brooch was silver with a large emerald set into the middle.

"Mum... is that...?", he asked, recognizing the item from the picture of his mum and dad on their wedding day.

"Your father's... yes, he wore it on our wedding day... Your great-great-great grandfather wore it first and passed it down from generation to generation... Someday I hope you and Jemma will have a son so that you can give it to him...", she said, pinning it on.

Leo went to the mirror and looked himself over.

"Leo... You look so much like your father...", his mum said softly before dabbing at her eyes, "Where have the years gone? It seems like just yesterday I was kissing you goodbye before you went off to your first day of school as a wee lad of age four... Here you are now, thirty years old and about to get married..."

Leo turned and hugged his mum tightly, whispering, "I couldn't have done it without you mum. I love you." 

Ward cleared his throat.

"Uh, Mrs. Fitz, we have to go now, the wedding planner wanted the bridesmaids and the groomsmen to line up for photos..."

Leo's mum kissed him on the cheek and left with the rest of the groomsmen. 

Leo was alone again and then he got the text from Ward, his ever-punctual Best Man, to get down to the groom's lounge. 

He left the room and hurried to the lounge, his nerves coiling up like a spring in his stomach. Once he arrived at the groom's lounge, one of the photographers got a few shots in. Leo was alone again after that.

He paced the length of the room as he practiced his personalized vows when Skye texted him.

_Fitz! We can't find Jemma anywhere! Please tell me she's with you!_

He had to sit down as he read the text a few more times, refusing to believe that Jemma had stood him up at their own wedding.

There was a soft knock at the door and he leaped to his feet to answer it. 

"Leo, it's Jemma... you can open the door in ten seconds, then come to the wooden door frame at the end of the hall but don't peer around it. I want to speak to you and tell you a few things before we get married."

"Okay..."

"Start counting.", she said and he began counting aloud as he heard the distinct rustle and hiss of fabric on the marble floor, partially muffling the sound of her retreating footsteps.

When he reached ten, he opened the door and saw the white edge of her gown flash for barely a second and disappear around the door frame.

He jogged to the end of the hall and leaned against the wood paneling.

"Hey Jemma."

"Hello Leo."

He saw her hand come around the door frame and he reached out to hold it.

"Leo... This may be our last conversation before we go out there and say our vows... I just wanted to let you know that every single day leading up to this moment has been pure bliss, except those days when you were in a coma, but even those days led to our first kiss and our first I love you's, so I'm grateful for those days. You are, and always will be, my hero... I'm ready to become your wife... I've been ready since the day we met... I love you, Leo... I'll always love you..."

"Jemma, my lovely Jemma, you are my whole world, I hope you know that... Just thinking of spending the rest of my life with you by my side is amazing... When we first met, I remember telling myself that you were beautiful,  _too_  beautiful for me to ever have a snowball's chance in hell with you. Here we are... fourteen and a half years later, about to get married. You're the queen of my heart. I love you."

"Oh... the photographer is here on the other side... he wants to take a photo of us like this...", Jemma said after a few moments of silence.

The photographer stood between the two sides of the door frame and asked for them to act like this was a candid shot. 

(Later the photo would reveal that both of them were leaning against the paneling and gazing wistfully at their joined hands.)

Soon Jemma said she had to go and Leo let go of her hand reluctantly before returning to his room where Ward texted him.

_We're lined up back here and ready to go. Good luck Fitz, I'll see you in a few._

The minister poked his head in the door at two minutes until two pm and said, "Mr. Fitz... It's time to start..."

Leo took a deep breath and followed the minister out of the room, walking into the large room that had been transformed into a wedding chapel

All of his and Jemma's family members were gathered there and a few of their Sci-Tech professors were there.

He stood with his back to the congregation, as was tradition, and his heart raced as the first notes of Pachelbel's Canon in D flowed forth.

He saw Jemma's cousin ushered off to the side with her little basket of white rose petals and then he saw May, Amelia, and Skye standing by the bride's side of the chapel.

He heard rather than saw the congregation stand up and gasp as Jemma entered the chapel on her father's arm.

The minister murmured to him, "Turn around lad, your bride is a sight to behold..." as Ward whispered, "Fitz, you have to see her..."

Leo inhaled and turned.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.

"Goddess" was an understatement.

Jemma was always very beautiful to Leo, but now, she was downright indescribable.

She wore all white, her silk gown had long lace sleeves, a satin bodice, and her gown had an intricately embroidered lace overlay. Her auburn hair was rolled back into a low-sitting loose bun that was fastened by a large jeweled hair clip. Her tulle veil was fastened under the bun and flowed down her back. The gown itself was meters of white material that moved as Jemma walked, giving her the illusion of defying gravity and walking on air itself. Her makeup was natural and perfect.

He teared up as the realization that Jemma was going to be his wife hit him.

She blushed and smiled shyly at him as she neared the altar.

She kissed and hugged her father at the altar before he gave Jemma's hand to the minister and gave the bride away.

Leo extended his hand and the minister said a blessing and placed Jemma's hand into his.

"Hey.", she whispered as they faced each other, her blush deepening.

"Hello.", he whispered back, "You're beautiful..."

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God and this congregation to join together Leo and Jemma in Holy Matrimony..."

Throughout the ceremony, Leo hung onto every word that the minister said and then it was time for the traditional handfasting ceremony.

The minister took the strip of the Fitz family tartan and began.

"Leopold and Jemma, I bid you look into each others eyes."

His azure eyes met her honey colored eyes and an unspoken vow was said between two minds.

"Will you honor and respect one another, and seek to never break that honor?", the minister asked.

"We will.", they replied together. 

"Will you share each other’s pain and seek to ease it?", the minister asked.

"We will."

"Will you share the burdens of each so that your spirits may grow in this union?"

"We will."

"Will you share each other’s laughter, and look for the brightness in life and the positive energy in each other?"

"We will.", they replied. 

"And so the binding is made.", said the minister as the tartan was tied together, "Jemma and Leopold, as your hands are bound together now, so your lives and spirits are joined in a union of love and trust. Above you are the stars and below you is the earth. Like the stars, your love should be a constant source of light, and like the earth, a firm foundation from which to grow."

Leo looked at his and Jemma's tied hands and smiled.

They planned to grow with each other.

"The couple has written their own vows in place of the traditional vows and will say them now.", the minister stated.

Leo cleared his throat and began.

"I, Leopold Iain Fitz, do take you, Jemma Elizabeth Simmons, to be my lawfully wedded wife. I promise to love you without condition, to respect and honor you each and every day, to laugh with you when you're happy, to support you when you're sad, to guide you when you ask for direction and allow you to do the same for me, to be your biggest fan and your ever-present listening audience. I promise to care for you each and every day and to stand by your side in times of hardship as well as good times. You've been my guiding light and my reason to smile every day since the day we met. I love you Jemma, and I'm ready to spend the rest of my life with you as your husband and your friend. I bind my energy to yours from this day forward."

Jemma's eyes welled up a little and then she began to recite her vows.

"I, Jemma Elizabeth Simmons, do take you, Leopold Iain Fitz, to be my lawfully wedded husband. I promise to love you without condition, to respect and honor you each and every day, to laugh with you when you're happy, to support you when you're sad, to guide you when you ask for direction and allow you to do the same for me, to be your biggest fan and your ever-present listening audience. I promise to care for you each and every day and to stand by your side in times of hardship as well as good times. You've been my hero from day one, my brave companion, and you're the driving force that pushes me every day to be all that I can be. I love you Leo, and I'm ready to spend the rest of my life with you as your wife and your friend. I bind my energy to yours from this day forward."

The minister motioned to have the rings brought forward and Skye brought Leo's ring forward while Ward brought Jemma's ring forward. 

The minister said a blessing and looked to Jemma.

"Jemma, repeat after me. "The ring goes endlessly on, just as our love will endure forever. I place it on your finger as a symbol of the vows which have made us husband and wife. With this ring, I thee wed.""

 "The ring goes endlessly on, just as our love will endure forever. I place it on your finger as a symbol of the vows which have made us husband and wife. With this ring, I thee wed.", she repeated and slipped the wedding band onto Leo's finger.

Leo took Jemma's ring. 

"Leopold, repeat after me. "The ring goes endlessly on, just as our love will endure forever. I place it on your finger as a symbol of the vows which have made us husband and wife. With this ring, I thee wed.""

He slipped the ring onto Jemma's finger and said, "The ring goes endlessly on, just as our love will endure forever. I place it on your finger as a symbol of the vows which have made us husband and wife. With this ring, I thee wed."

They looked into each other's eyes and smiled, knowing what was coming next.

"What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. By the power vested in me in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I pronounce you husband and wife.", The minister smiled at the wide grins that broke out on Leo and Jemma's faces, "You may kiss the bride."

"Gladly.", Leo murmured and reverently stroked Jemma's cheek as he pulled her close and kissed her.

This kiss was as potent as their first kiss and Leo gripped Jemma tighter before gracefully dipping her like she always talked about and called "elegant" and "romantic" whenever they watched sappy old romance films together.

He pulled her back up as they turned to face the congregation and they smiled at each other when the minister spoke again.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Fitz-Simmons!"

They looked around and saw everyone applauding, their mothers weeping, and then Leo looked at the very back of the room where the light from outside shone in through the doors and could have sworn that he saw the ghost of his father standing there and nodding to him before disappearing. 

Leo kissed Jemma on the cheek as they processed out and took pictures.

The reception was big and they didn't get a moment's peace amid the photos, toasts, speeches, and the meal.

The DJ finally asked that the dance floor be cleared so that Leo and Jemma could have their first dance together as husband and wife.

They danced to the song "I Finally Found Someone" by Barbra Streisand and Bryan Adams.

They sang the song in low voices to each other as they swayed together.

Jemma had her father-daughter dance and she ended up crying a little at the end.  

The party really got started and Leo decided to whisk his wife away to be alone and get away from the loud dance party that had begun.

Leo and Jemma walked outside to get some air and were relieved to be alone.

"Let's take a stroll, shall we?", Leo suggested as he saw the fairy lights that lit the gravel paths. 

They kept to the outdoor corridor near the castle when they passed a path that led to the hidden gazebo that Leo discovered on his stroll.

"Come on Jemma, I want to show you something...", he said and they left the outdoor corridor to walk into the garden.

"Wait a second darling,", Jemma said as she lifted her skirts so they wouldn't get damp or dirty, then she took Leo's hand and allowed herself to be led to the gazebo where they were hidden for a few moments alone.

It was a clear night with a full moon and a sky full of stars. The pale moonlight reflected off of the glassy surface of the water and the low light gave the place an ethereal glow. 

He took both of her hands and spun her around in the dim glow of the fairy lights before pulling her close.

"Jemma, you look so perfect...", he whispered as he pulled back and cupped her face, "What did I ever do to deserve you?"

Jemma kissed him gently and replied, "Nothing. You were yourself... that's all that matters to me..."

The newlyweds stood there in each other's embrace for a while until Skye and Ward  stumbled into the gazebo, both of them significantly buzzed. 

"You two need to -hic- get in there...", Skye hiccuped.

"Yeah, I think it's something about a garter and a bouquet toss...", Ward said.

A few moments later, Jemma was sitting on a chair in the middle of the dance floor as Ward had the mic.

"Okay Gents, the moment you've all been waiting for! The garter toss!"

Jemma smirked at Leo and hiked up the edge of her skirt to her mid calf, blushing at the whistles and catcalls.

"Look all you want but no touching, lads!", she laughed, "I'm off the market!"

Leo got on all  fours in front of Jemma and went after her garter without using his hands, pressing soft, teasing kisses along her thigh until he reached the garter and removed it with his teeth. 

He tossed the garter and one of his cousins caught it. 

Then Jemma grabbed her bouquet and watched as all the women came together and she turned and tossed it into the fray.

Ward simply reached up and caught it like it was nothing before handing it to Skye. 

Soon the newlyweds were waving goodbye and heading off to their honeymoon suite in the castle.

Leo hadn't really given much thought about their first night, he had been too overwhelmed with the initial wedding to think about it, but now, as he and Jemma ascended the grand staircase, it was all he could think about.

Those seven nights apart  _had_ driven him a little bit insane. _  
_

He had hugged his pillow to his body the past seven nights because he usually hugged Jemma when he slept.

"So,", he began as they reached the suite, "Mrs. Fitz-Simmons, would you like to sleep off your exhaustion or--"

Jemma cut Leo off with a kiss that had passion rooted at the very core of it.

As they pulled away from each other, Leo knew that Jemma,  _his wife_ , didn't plan on sleeping anything off. 

Jemma had a funny little smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes that ignited a flame inside of Leo.

"Right then... no sleep tonight...", he said quickly and unlocked the door to their suite.

 He looked at Jemma and scooped her up in his arms to carry her over the threshold, smirking when she gasped at how effortlessly he lifted her up.

"Leo have you been training?", she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He set her down on the other side of the threshold and placed the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door before closing it. 

"Yeah, Ward's been teaching me some things... I decided that I'd need to be in shape if we're going to be moving out of our flat and into a house. I don't want to strain myself."

Jemma sat down on the edge of the large bed and Leo crossed the room to sit beside her. 

She gazed at her wedding band.

"Jemma,", Leo murmured, tipping her jaw up and kissing her softly, "This is the day I've waited for all my life..."

Jemma placed her palm on his chest and whispered, "I feel the same...", as she kissed him again, this time wrapping her arms around him and running her fingers through his hair.

The next few minutes passed in a haze of kisses.

"Suppose I should get you out of this, yeah?", Leo asked between kisses as he gestured to Jemma's gown.

Jemma got up and pulled a medium sized white trunk out of the closet.

"Kill two birds with one stone...", she murmured, opening the trunk and putting her shoes in there along with her veil.

Leo crossed the room and stood behind her as she straightened up, wrapping his arms around her midriff. 

"Always so organized...", he whispered, placing a kiss on her neck and smirking at the way she gasped softly.

He began slowly unbuttoning the row of small buttons that ran down her spine and held the sheer lace upper back of the gown together, kissing her soft skin as it was exposed.

"Leo...", Jemma breathed as he began unlacing the bodice, again going slowly with the intention of not only preserving her gown, but also teasing her a little in the process.

He noticed how her breathing had changed and become slightly more labored as he kissed down her spine until the gown was loose enough for her to work her way out of.

"I have the bag for this in the bathroom, I'll take it off the rest of the way in there...", she said before walking away.

Leo made a noise of discomfort and she cast him a small smile before disappearing into the bathroom.

"I'll be right back, I just need to freshen up...", she said.

Leo untied his ghillie brogues and took off the flashes, setting them aside as he unpinned his fly plaid and placed the brooch by his phone. 

He placed his sporran on the vanity counter and went to shrug out of his doublet when he looked in the mirror and saw Jemma standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

He turned quickly and his mind short circuited as he took her in.

She was wearing a lacy white bra and a pair of matching knickers but the thing that really sent his heart racing was the white lab coat she wore over them. 

She walked towards the spot where he stood rooted in place and she reached up, pulling out the clip that held her hair in place and smiled sweetly at him. Leo watched in a mesmerized daze as her hair came undone and hung in thick curls, coming down just below her bust-line.

"Well? What do you think?", she asked as she blushed, "Too much?"

"You look incredible.", Leo replied, pulling her close and kissing her, "I love it...I love you...", he murmured as he pulled the lab coat off of her shoulders, "Good Lord, Mrs. Jemma Fitz-Simmons...I love you so much..."

They both shed their remaining clothes and rolled onto the bed as Leo landed on top of Jemma and placed his forehead to hers, nuzzling her cheek affectionately with his nose, still murmuring "I love you" to her between feather light kisses.

She chuckled softly and whispered, "I love you too... Mr. Leopold Fitz-Simmons..."  

* * *

 

 


	4. For You...

* * *

**_For You..._ **

* * *

It was December 22nd and Leo Fitz-Simmons was busy hanging a pine and holly garland along the handrail of the grand staircase of the house that he and Jemma had moved into only seven months earlier.

It was a beautiful old three-story house on the outskirts of Edinburgh City with a stone front, five gas fireplaces (one in the living room, one in the small library/study, one in the kitchen, one in the formal dining room, and one in their bedroom), four bedrooms (five if you counted the den with its futon), four and a half bathrooms, a spacious basement (they had to have a full lab and garage because genius like theirs couldn't be stopped), and a conservatory where Jemma was growing herbs as well as flowers.  It had taken a lot of serious cleaning, painting, polishing, and grout work to get the old house looking new again, but it was well worth the trouble to see the way the new deep cream colored walls contrasted beautifully with the half-wall mahogany paneling and the antique chandelier and wall sconces that Jemma had insisted on having restored.

Leo smirked as he hung the last length of garland, recalling the looks of sheer astonishment that he got from the team when he and Jemma showed them pictures of the house. May had lifted her eyebrows in a rare display of surprise, Trip had let out a low whistle, Ward nodded, Skye had exclaimed "Holy shit! This place is like a mansion... how did you afford it and then  _not_  go broke remodeling it?", and Coulson had added, "Actually, Skye just asked a valid question. How  _did_  you manage to afford that?"

Leo and Jemma looked at each other and then responded by telling the team that it still took a loan to do it, but that they had saved enough money by getting full-ride scholarships to every school they applied for and by inventing a few small things for Tony Stark and also by having SHIELD covering their living expenses for years.

 The front door opened and closed.

"Leo, I'm home!", Jemma called from the foyer and Leo bounded down the stairs to greet his wife with a kiss and a smile.

 "Hello dear...", he said as he took her coat and purse, hanging them up with her other winter items, "How did everything go a the doctor's? Did she diagnose that problem of yours?"

Jemma had been acting a bit strange in the past month or so. She had been avoiding her favorite type of breakfast tea like the plague, even buying a different type of tea to drink, she had been using the bathroom more, doing less experiments with possibly hazardous bacteria and unstable chemicals. On one occasion, Leo had made her breakfast and brought it up to her in bed as a surprise, but when she woke up and smelled the food, she turned a shade of green and ran to the bathroom where she spent an hour on her knees, retching into the toilet. She had also been putting on some weight, but Leo knew better than to talk about her weight because every man knew that bringing up that topic was a bad idea.

 Jemma went to her doctor today to address what she told Leo was a “feminine area of concern”, which automatically signaled to Leo to leave well enough alone. He had said in the past, “I know enough about the reproductive parts of the female anatomy to know that what happens to them is both none of my concern and nothing I could ever possibly relate to.”, and that had been good enough for Jemma.        

She nodded and replied, "It wasn't anything serious, but the doctor just said that I should take it easy. I have to be careful what I eat. No heavy lifting either.", Jemma looked around at Leo's decorating and murmured, "Oh Leo, this is beautiful..."

“You like it?”, he asked as she peered into the living room where he had hung the stockings that they had bought and personalized for each other for their first Christmas together way back during their Sci-Tech days. 

“I love it… I see you saved the ornaments for me?”, she asks turning to face him.

“For us. We always trim the tree together.”

Leo noticed the shiver that ran through his wife’s petite body and she hugged her arms across her torso.

He crossed the room and pulled her close, thankful that she was okay.

“Mum and Dad are coming up on the 24th and they’ve decided to stay in one of the spare rooms. Your mum called yesterday and said she’d be coming on the 24th to stay with us as well. May called two weeks ago and said that the team minus Trip would be coming and staying with us. They’re picking up Skye and Ward today.”, Jemma said as they began decorating the tree.

Skye had been promoted to head of the new SHIELD Worldwide Communications and Logistics Operations facility. Ward had been promoted to head up the newest SHIELD branch; P.A.W.W.S. (Professionals and Animals Working Within SHIELD). He was head of the  Academy, the adjoining facility specializing in the training of K9 and other animal specialist units along with the training of their specialist handlers, as well as the head veterinarian at the SHIELD P.A.W.W.S hospital. Trip became the head of the revamped SHIELD Operations branch. May became the deputy director of SHIELD as well as the head of everything not related to communications, logistics, P.A.W.W.S, or operations. May ran the main Academy. Director Coulson was the head of SHIELD and the head of the worldwide Council. Leo and Jemma had been promoted to the head of the SHIELD Science and Technology branches and they would be running both from the nearest SHIELD base.

 “Aw, why won’t Trip be coming?”, Leo asked, disappointed that his friend wouldn’t be joining them. 

“According to May, it’s because this may be his father’s last Christmas as the cancer has progressed to stage three and the doctors aren’t being very optimistic  about his chances of recovery, so Coulson told Trip to take as much time as he needs and spend it with his father.”, Jemma replied.

 “How long will everyone be staying?”, Leo asked.

“Coulson and May have to leave on the 26th because, well, they run SHIELD… Skye and Ward are staying until the 28th and then they’ll be leaving along with my parents and your mum. Your mum will be coming back on your actual birthday, but we’ll just be having a nice lunch that day and celebrating early on Christmas Eve so that everyone can be here, I even managed to email Trip and schedule a Skype call so he can wish you a happy birthday.”

“Sounds good to me.”, he said.

The next two days passed in a haze of final cleaning, decorating, and preparation for when everyone began showing up on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve arrived with snow, covering everything in an immaculate blanket of white and team Fitz-Simmons got up early to start the day.

Leo shoveled the paths and brought in wood for the fireplaces from the woodshed before wrapping his gifts for Jemma, his mum, his in-laws, and the team and placing them under the tree with the gifts that Jemma had already put out. He hung the rest of the stockings as well as the mistletoe and then had to drive to the train station to pick up his mum and Jemma’s parents. Thankfully, both of their trains had arrivals that were a half hour apart, so he didn’t have to make two trips. On the way back to the house, he stopped and bought a few things that Jemma needed for the meal.

Jemma had been in the kitchen all day long, insisting on preparing the large meal they would have that evening and then starting on the Christmas dinner so she wouldn’t have quite as much to do the next day in terms of cooking. Leo wanted to assist her but she had shooed him out of the kitchen with a smile, telling him that a lot more had to be done elsewhere.

When he arrived home, the house smelled amazing and he helped everyone get settled into their rooms before having to run back downstairs and answer the doorbell.

The smiling faces of Coulson, May, Skye, and Ward greeted him and he welcomed them inside.

Soon the large house was full of laughter and bustling with activity. Jemma left the kitchen to give everyone the grand tour of the house with Leo and everyone agreed that the house looked magnificent.

Jemma informed everyone that they would go to church the next morning in the city and then disappeared back into the kitchen. Leo started the fires in the kitchen, living room, and dining room before setting the table with Skye and Ward’s help and then everyone came to the table for dinner.

Jemma had really outdone herself and she was proud of how well the meal had turned out. Everyone complimented Jemma up and down on her fantastic cooking, and Leo got a bottle of wine to celebrate. He went to pour some in Jemma’s glass, but she waved him off, saying that she didn’t want any.  Coulson talked about work and SHIELD and how busy things were. May talked about how she didn’t like working with new recruits in the past, but now that she could teach them all important lessons, she was starting to like the young agents in training. Ward talked about how P.A.W.W.S. was really starting to expand. They had recruited more veterinary specialists and the number of K9 units had tripled in the past ten months. Skye had been very busy and told everyone that she was still getting used to the idea that she was the one that everyone in her branch looked up to, she wasn’t even twenty six yet and she had people working under her that were older than she was and calling her “Ma’am”. Leo’s mum and Jemma’s parents talked back and forth about things like politics, the weather, and how Christmas was when Leo and Jemma were children. Leo talked with everyone about everything but he noticed that Jemma was remaining unusually quiet. She had a smile on her face that reminded Leo of Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile; like she knew a wonderful secret.

Leo went to use the bathroom and when he returned, he saw that everyone was smiling like they had a secret to tell.

Dinner ended and May helped Leo clear the table for dessert as Jemma got Leo’s birthday cake and answered the Skype call from Trip, bringing the tablet into the dining room so he could be with everyone.

Everyone shuffled around and talked among themselves until Jemma stood up and got everyone’s attention.

“Alright, you all know that Leo’s birthday is on the 29th, but we’ve decided to celebrate early so that everyone could be here. Skye, I hope you’re recording this.”

“I got you covered.”, Skye replied, her phone already out to record.

Jemma lit the thirty one candles and began to sing, her eyes never leaving Leo’s.

Gradually everyone joined in and sang in varying degrees of dissonance and pitch.

 _“Happy_   _Birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”_ , they sang and then Jemma silenced the rest of them and continued singing on her own, _“by this time next year dear, you’ll be the father of two.”_

Leo stared at his wife and Jemma stared back at her husband.

It was dead silent for a second and Leo tried to get his brain to comprehend the words that Jemma sang.

He was going to be a _father_.

Of _two_.

Jemma just told him that she was _pregnant_.

Realization hit him and his stomach did an odd flip.

Then the rest of the room broke into cheers and Leo was catapulted back into reality when Coulson clapped him on the back and said, “Congratulations!”.

He was still stunned and the thing that really made everything seem very real was when Jemma  pulled out an image from a sonogram she must’ve had recently and held it just below her waist.

Then Leo regained control of his body. He got up swiftly, not thinking at all, simply running around the table to where Jemma stood and then embracing her.

He didn’t care that the rest of the team, his mum, or her parents were there, watching as he broke down and cried tears of joy into Jemma’s shoulder. He didn’t care that Skye was recording this. He didn’t care that his mum and Jemma’s parents were practically beside themselves with excitement at the idea of being grandparents.

Leo stepped back quickly when he realized that he was probably hugging Jemma too hard and he tried to apologize.

“Oh no… was I not supposed to hug you? Was that too hard? Did I hurt them?”, he rambled, tripping over his words.

Jemma laughed.

“No Leo, they’re fine… It’s okay…”, she reassured, her own tears of joy starting to fall.

“How far along are you?”, May asked.

“The doctor said I was five weeks pregnant and that I probably wouldn’t start showing a lot until nine weeks.”

“How long have you known?”, Jemma’s mum asked.

“I found out I was pregnant three and a half weeks ago.”, Jemma replied.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”, Leo asked.

He felt a little betrayed by the fact that Jemma had kept this huge secret from him for almost a month, but he wasn’t angry at her.

“Well I wanted to tell you when I found out, but then you told me how you had invited everyone to spend Christmas here, and I decided to make this holiday special by telling everyone at the same time. I hope you aren’t upset at me…”, she replied.

“Of course I’m not upset at you!”, Leo replied, “How could I possibly be upset? I just got the best news of my life!”

“Well, come on dear, make a wish and blow out the candles…”, Jemma said as she nodded to where the candles were melting into the cake.

Leo wished that his children would be born healthy, smart, and strong. He wished that his father was around to see this. He wished for Jemma to be strong during the physical ordeal that she was going to endure. He wished for everything to turn out fine.

He blew out the candles and everyone applauded again.

Trip had to sign off because his mom was about to get their family dinner underway, but he wished everyone a merry Christmas, congratulated Leo and Jemma again on the pregnancy announcement, and wished Leo a happy birthday.

The team formed an assembly line and the dishes were cleared, washed, dried and put away.  Soon everyone was bustling around and doing their evening routines.

Leo went through the house, catching parts of conversations as he went and making sure that everyone was settled into their rooms.

May and Coulson were sharing the full sized futon in the den on the ground floor. Skye and Ward were sharing the spare bedroom on the third floor that Leo and Jemma hadn’t bought furniture for yet. They had apologized up and down for their lack of furniture but Skye and Ward insisted that they didn’t mind sleeping on a queen sized air mattress on the floor and that they were able-bodied enough to not be bothered with arthritis or bad knees in the morning, telling Leo and Jemma to give the nicer beds to their aging parents. Leo’s mum was in the spare room on the second floor with the twin sized bed that she slept on whenever she came for an overnight visit. The room was technically hers and Leo had intended it to be her room so that when she was no longer able to live on her own, she could live with them. Jemma’s parents were settled in the third bedroom on the second  floor with the queen sized bed.  

The master bedroom was on the third floor and Leo went there after putting out the fires in the fireplaces, closing the flues, locking the doors, closing the drapes, and turning off the lights.

Jemma was sitting on the edge of their bed with her pajamas on, looking at the sonogram photo pensively.

She looked up when Leo entered the room and smiled at him.

“Jemma, do you know if they’re identical or fraternal?”, he asked.

“No, the doctor said it was too early to tell but that we’re more likely to have fraternal twins.”

Leo changed into his pajamas and brushed his teeth as Jemma rambled on about how hard it was to keep her pregnancy from him and he let her ramble, still very much in shock about Jemma being pregnant, let alone with twins.

Jemma fell silent after a few minutes and Leo left the bathroom.

Jemma stood in front of the full length mirror in their room with her t shirt pulled up to just below her bra and was looking down at the small bump that was just starting to form around her abdomen.

“We never talked much about having children.”, Jemma stated, not looking up at her husband as he sank down onto the mattress.

“We talked a little about it, we both said that we liked the idea of someday becoming parents…”, Leo replied.

“Yes, the key word being _“someday”_. I don’t want to give up my passion in science just yet to become a mother to not only one but _two_ children. I’m at the height of my career and I don’t want to stop. I’m sorry if that sounds awful and selfish, but that’s how I feel, as much as I do want to be a mother.”, she said, turning to face him.

“There are plenty of mothers out there who can do both. Pregnancy didn’t slow them down and I know you Jemma, I know how you are. You won’t let this slow you down until your doctor says to slow down. You may be limited in what you can do, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop. When you had that Chitauri virus, you were given two hours to live. You didn’t just quit, you did everything in your power to make those hours count.”

“And then I gave up.”, she added, pulling her shirt back down and padding over to the bed before sliding in under the heavy duvet and facing him, “When I found out that I was pregnant, I was so happy and then I was worried. I found out a few days ago that I was carrying twins at the five week sonogram and by then, I had made peace with the notion of being a mother, I heard twins and I got worried.”

Leo looked at her.

“Why were you worried?”

“I was worried for my own selfish reasons… I swore to myself that I wouldn’t become a British version of June Cleaver the happy housewife who’s biggest adventure in life is staying at home and cooking all day and maybe joining a ladies’ garden club. I’ve already seen the world and helped people, so I guess my greatest adventure ended the moment I conceived.”

“But you said you wanted to be a mother.”

“I do, I just didn’t want my adventure to be over so quickly… I want to be a mother and I’m already in love with the little babies that are growing inside of me. I wanted to do so much and my way was free of obstacles until now. Now I’ll be facing off against my two biggest adversaries who happen to both be only about the size of a pea, each with a tiny beating heart the size of a poppy seed. I’ll love them to pieces and then still carry on, but it’ll be hard work.”, Jemma replied.

“You’ll have help…No one said you had to do this alone and I don’t plan on letting you try to do it all by yourself,”, Leo replied and placed a hand on Jemma’s abdomen, “These are _our_ children inside of you. They both have 23 of my chromosomes and 23 of your chromosomes. Correct me if I’m wrong lass, but I’m pretty sure that that makes them half mine. That means that I’ll do whatever you don’t feel up to. It means that, after you’ve carried them and given birth to them, I’ll do whatever I can to help you out… I wish the physical strain of carrying and delivery could be half my load to bear as well…”

Jemma looked at her husband and realized that he was just as silently worried as she was. He didn’t really have a great deal of confidence in becoming a father because he didn’t have a role model of a father to take after because his had died when he was eight.

“The coming months will be the hardest of our lives…”, he began.

“But we’ll do just fine because we have each other.”, Jemma finished.  

He loved her sense of hope and her optimistic outlook and he switched the light off and pulled her close beneath the duvet. She snuggled against him and he whispered the three words that would get them through any struggle.

“I love you.”

“I love you too Leo, now let’s get some sleep, we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

* * *

 


	5. I Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The birth has started!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my longest chapter yet so bear with me, I tried to make it flow smoothly while also giving readers a sense of how quickly and yet how slowly childbirth is. It's a whole process of "hurry up and wait", and I hope you enjoy it.  
> As per usual, any and all mistakes are my own.

* * *

_**"I Love You."** _

* * *

 

“Leo!”, Jemma called from her spot on the futon on the den (which had become her makeshift bedroom when her doctor ordered her to avoid taking the steps at all costs). 

Thankfully there were only about five steps into the home and one small step down into the den for Jemma to handle with her center of balance being changed by two babies, weighing about five pounds and five ounces each.

Jemma’s ankles had swollen up and her doctor, Dr. Lisa Bailey, had diagnosed her with edema, telling her to take it easy. Dr. Bailey had also instructed Jemma not to engage in any type of strenuous exercise because she hadn’t been exercising a lot before pregnancy, but encouraged Jemma to continue her pre-pregnancy habit of taking short walks with Leo every day in the evening.  

Jemma had become positively stir-crazy and was more than ready to just give birth.

Her due date was set for 18 August.

It was 25 August.

A whole week had passed since the due date and on the 28th, Dr. Bailey would induce labor.

“Leo!”, Jemma called again.

Leo heard her calling from the nursery where he had been putting the last of the baby books on the bookshelf along with thick books on biology, chemistry, and beginners guides to engineering (in case their children ended up being geniuses), doing some last minute preparation for when the babies would be brought home.

He ran down two flights of stairs and skidded round the corner on the hardwood floors of the front hallway and into the den.

“Is it time?”, he asked, panting as he stood by his very pregnant wife who had a flat round speaker on her abdomen, because apparently babies liked to listen to music in the womb.

“No, I’m sorry, I just needed to ask you something.”, Jemma said and gasped, her hand flying to her abdomen. “They’re at it again…”

Leo sighed in relief as his wife placed his hand on her abdomen and felt both his babies keeping perfect time to the music that was coming from the speaker.

“They’re partial to The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Smashing Pumpkins, Black Sabbath, Bruno Mars, and Flogging Molly…”, she said.

At least it wasn’t another false alarm.

“What is it love?”, he asked as Jemma patted the space beside her on the futon and he sat down.

Jemma took both his hands and held them gently, staring into his azure eyes.

She had been very testy and angry lately so hearing her speak so softly was unusual.

She hadn’t enjoyed her pregnancy, that much was clear.

“Will you stay with me in the delivery room when the time comes?”, she asked gently, before continuing, “I just know that I’ll probably be in a lot of pain and loopy from the drugs so I might end up saying some hurtful things… I also know that it won’t be a pleasant viewing experience and that it’ll be quite messy, I don’t want you to sit through what might be hours of me verbally abusing you while watching a natural part of life that may cause you to pass out or throw up. I know you get squeamish…”

Leo smiled at Jemma.

“Jemma, I promised to stay by your side through hardships and also to share your pain and seek to ease it. I would never just leave you to deal with this on your own, not when you are bringing fraternal twins into this world, which is something that not a whole lot of women can boast about.”, he replied, placing a hand on her bump.

“Hmm, that’s odd… they usually aren’t this still…”, Jemma said as she glanced down at herself, “They felt like they were playing football in there not even a half hour ago…”, she shrugged, “I suppose they’ve calmed down for a bit, perhaps I can run to the loo before they start kicking me again…”, she said as she stood up and shuffled to the bathroom.

Leo looked on the side table and saw where Jemma’s book was sitting.

What To Expect When You’re Expecting laid facedown and open on the surface of the table with various pages folded back, dog-eared, and random fluorescent page markers sticking out every which way.

She had read that book from cover-to-cover ever since it had arrived in the mail as a late Christmas present from Trip along with the other two books in the series; What To Expect: The First Year and What To Expect: The Toddler Years. He had sent Leo a spinoff version of  the first book called What To Expect When Your Wife Is Expanding. Jemma got the informational books on everything she could possibly need to know on becoming a mother, and he was kind of worried because motherhood, it seemed, came with a fully detailed instruction manual, from how to be a good mother while the baby is still in utero to birth to age three.

Fatherhood was something that didn’t really come with instructions, and although his book had been quite helpful in the past months, there wasn’t a manual for how to be a good father, a good husband, and somehow manage to help Jemma raise two daughters, two sons, or one of each. He had the husband part down pretty well so far, it wasn’t much different than dating and living together except that they were collaborating on life and not just on some project for SHIELD.

Jemma had grown up with both parents, she knew what a good mum was supposed to do. Leo had grown up for the most part without a father and his mum had done her best with pulling double duty after Leo’s father died. Leo knew what a good mum was supposed to do, but he had no clue how to be a father.

He was so caught up in wondering how in the name of God he was going to be a good father that he just barely heard Jemma shuffle into the kitchen. He got up to help his wife and was halfway to the kitchen when he heard something spill on the flagstone tiles.

“Oh bloody hell…”, Jemma swore in annoyance under her breath before gasping in shock, _“Oh bloody hell…”_

Leo rounded the corner and saw Jemma stepping back from a puddle on the floor with a glass of water in her hand.

She looked up at her husband and back down at the puddle, her features conveying surprise.

“I think my waters just broke.”, she said as if she was simply stating that the tea was done brewing or that her lavender had started to bloom.

Leo stood there and let her words sink in.

“A-are you sure?”, he asked, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that his wife was going to go into labor soon.

She shuffled over to him and repeated herself, this time with a sense of urgency in her tone as she braced a hand on her bump.

“Yes… my  waters definitely just broke.”

Leo sprang into action, pulling gloves out of the jar they kept on the counter and wiping up the spill, stripping off the gloves, running into the den to grab Jemma’s book off the table, turning off lights, and grabbing her hospital bag. Jemma was on the phone with her parents in the bathroom. She emerged just as Leo was running down from the nursery with his book on being an expectant father.

“Let’s go Jemma!”

“You know I could probably just stay at home for a few more hours…”, she insisted, “You know… because the early labor phase lasts eight to twelve hours… I should be drinking water eating small, high protein snacks, and conserving energy…”

“Alright then… but when you get to the next phase, we’re leaving…”, Leo said.

The next few hours, Jemma scratched rapidly in a pocket notepad, making notes of the time of her first contractions, timing them to the second as only a scientist could as she drank lots of water and ate some snacks. She walked around restlessly.

 A few hours later, Jemma gasped and had her strongest contraction yet and said, “I’m in my active phase now…call Dr. Bailey… I’ll call your mum…”

Leo helped a surprisingly calm Jemma into the car after placing a sheet of plastic and a towel over the seat. He locked up the house before getting into the car and driving off to the hospital.

“Hello? Mrs. Fitz? Yes, this is Jemma… I’m sorry, I keep forgetting that you like for me to call you Helen… It’s an old habit, you know… Well no, actually quite the opposite… Leo’s here, he’s driving… Well no, we’re actually on our way to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh… yes… the twins are on their way… No, actually I decided not to have a water birth like I originally wanted, I found out that the team at the birthing center was midwife-led and not obstetrician-led, meaning I couldn’t get an epidural even if I wanted one… Yes, I decided to get an epidural… Well, since my pain tolerance levels are quite low, I’d rather just feel a slight pinch in the spine and then give birth without pain… Alright then, I’ll let you head to the station, I’ll have Leo send you the room number… see you soon…”, Jemma hung up, keeping her voice even before gasping.

“What? What was that? What’s happening?”, Leo asked as he rounded a corner.

Jemma recovered from her tense state and replied, “Well, I’m starting to feel things happening a little sooner than I expected... that was a contraction and one of the babies just shifted, so we’d better get to the hospital soon, I can feel both of them shifting about now … These babies… I swear to God, they’re a week late and now that they’ve surprised me, they can’t seem to wait any longer… At this rate, I think I’ll be fully dilated by the time my parent’s train gets into the station in four hours or so.”

“Want to try and call the team?”, Leo suggested, “Maybe talking to Skye or Coulson will take your mind off of things…oh shite… there’s a bloody traffic jam blocking the way!”, he swore, rolling down his window, “Move it you idiots!! We have to get to the hospital!!”.

Jemma rolled her eyes.

“Leo, calm down… I’m not even fully effaced yet…”, she said, trying to calm her husband down.

“No but if this mess doesn’t clear up in an hour or so…What if you do end up entering full labor early? I don’t want you giving birth in the car…”, came his anxious rebuttal.

Jemma rolled her eyes and dialed the number for Coulson’s cell phone.

“Hello sir. Yes, I’m very well… I’m actually on my way to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh where … yes, my waters have broken… No, Leo thought it was another false alarm too, I assured him it wasn’t… Are you on the BUS? Where are you now? What base are you taking off from? Well Denmark isn’t too far away… of course I would like to talk to May… Hello? May? Yes, I’m here…mm hmm… You have Skye, Ward, and Trip with you? Do you think you can fly over and land at the Sci-Tech base? Alright I’ll let you get the wheels up… Leo will text you the room number… see you soon… thank you.”, she ended the call as they moved forward in traffic at a crawling pace.

Jemma began to fret over her appearance.

“Oh look at me… I haven’t shaved my legs in ages… I look _awful!_ ”, she worried as she tried to pull her hair back into a plaited braid.

“You look fine Jems, don’t worry so much…”, he said, trying to boost his wife’s self-esteem.

Jemma reached down in her bag and pulled out  a nearly completed pale yellow baby blanket and a ball of soft yarn and began crocheting.

She had taught herself how to crochet after New Year’s Eve, wanting to at least have a few blankets made by the time the babies were born. It had become her hobby when she could no longer work in the lab and dissect things.

She had already made three blankets and was nearly done the fourth one, all of them the same pale yellow.

Skye asked Jemma once why she chose yellow as not only the color if the blankets but also as the predominant color in the nursery and Jemma explained that she and Leo wanted to keep the genders of their twins a surprise and that they had the sonogram tech keep the genders a secret, even telling her to angle the screen away from them during the imaging session and put tape over the genders in the physical photographs to hide them, as she and Leo didn’t want to accidentally look and find out what they were having. Yellow was a gender neutral color (not to mention it was Jemma’s favorite color besides blue) and it would work well with the cream colored walls in the nursery.

Jemma stuffed the blanket back in her bag just as they pulled into the parking garage at the hospital.

“Leo, you’re going to have to help me get out, I think I can manage walking into the building while you get my bag.”, Jemma said as she unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door, only to pause and cringe as another contraction hit.

Leo ran around to the passenger’s side and helped her to her feet, grabbing her bag out of the back seat as they went into the hospital and were directed to the maternity unit.

Leo went straight to the receptionist’s desk.

“My wife is having twins.”, Leo began and the receptionist typed furiously away without looking up at him.

“Name of patient?”, she asked.

“Jemma Elizabeth Fitz-Simmons. Jemma is spelled with a ‘J’ and two ‘m’s. There’s a hyphen between Fitz and Simmons.”

“How are you related to her?”

“I just said she’s my wife!”, Leo yelled and Jemma swatted him on his shoulder.

The receptionist looked up at Jemma and then at Leo with a “was-that-outburst-really-necessary?” look on her face before looking at and addressing Jemma.

“Is this your first time?”, she asked.

Jemma nodded, “Yes.”, as she walked in circles.

“Then I wish you luck. I’m a mother of four myself and I must say, the first one was the hardest. After that, it’s easy because your body is used to it.”

“Was your husband or partner in the room during the birth?”, Jemma asked.

“He was for part of the first one and none of the others. He had to leave halfway during the delivery because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood and kept carrying on… I had the midwife kick him out… If he can’t deal with it and won’t shut his trap, send him out. Trust me dear, you don’t want your husband in there…”, she smirked at Leo and added, “’specially if he’s a lightweight around blood…”

Jemma looked at Leo and sighed.

“Is your doctor here?”, the receptionist asked.

“Yes, I am.”, came Dr. Bailey’s heavily accented reply as she pulled her dreadlocks back into her brightly colored bouffant-style surgical scrub hat and greeted the couple with a friendly smile, which eased both Leo and Jemma’s tension levels by a lot.

Leo liked Dr. Bailey’s tact, her excellent balance between professionalism and humor, and also  how she explained things in a way he could understand. Dr. Bailey was a seasoned professional who had delivered almost six thousand babies in her twenty years as an OB/GYN and she had been delivering babies since she was a teenager as a midwife’s assistant in her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. Jemma liked her because they could speak without laymen’s terms when Leo wasn’t around and also because her bedside manner was a fine tuned skill that many doctors lacked.              

“Dr. Leo Fitz-Simmons, how are you doing?”, she asked, coming around with a wheelchair and shaking Leo’s hand before helping Jemma to sit.

“I’m nervous for Jemma.”, he replied. “And I’m hungry… I haven’t had my lunch yet…”

“Why are you nervous? I’ll have both your babies born in no time and then you and your lovely wife will have nothing more to worry about… Think of the end result if you’re nervous, you’ll get to have your little family all together at last. Are you nervous Dr. Jemma?”

Jemma shook her head.

“I have the support of my husband here. I have you and your many years of experience. I have my twins to look forward to. I’m actually quite calm aside from the fact that my active labor phase just started.”

They turned into a room and Jemma asked Leo to leave and get some lunch while she got into a gown, got her epidural, and got her dilation checked by Dr. Bailey.

Leo returned after visiting the hospital cafeteria and calling everyone to tell them that they weren’t all allowed back to the delivery room but that they should call him when they got to the hospital.

He found Jemma sitting in bed with the TV on watching classic Doctor Who as the midwife scratched on her clipboard.

She smiled as he entered the room and told him that his scrubs reminded him of the time when they  were doing those dissections in the lab and he freaked out because she left a cat’s liver by his lunch.

Dr. Bailey looked up from the clipboard she was writing on with an incredulous look on her face.

“You left a cat’s liver by his _lunch_?”, she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Leo and Jemma nodded in unison and Leo swore he heard Dr. Bailey mutter, “No wonder he’s squeamish.”, under her breath.

Dr. Bailey sighed and said, “Well, you’ll be waiting a few hours for your hard labor to start, so we won’t move you to the delivery room just yet. I have to go check to see if I have any other patients and to see if I can reschedule my appointments, but I’ll be checking in every now and then to see how everything is going. Okay?”

“Sounds good, but why reschedule? Surely their needs can be addressed while I’m waiting…”, Jemma replied.

Dr. Bailey looked at her and sighed.

“Dr. Jemma, I won’t mince words with you, so hear me out. Your labor is not only past it’s due date by a week, which is abnormal for twins, it’s also your first time, and you have a slightly smaller pelvic outlet than most women. Most of the twins I’ve delivered have been in various positions, hardly any of them are both presented in the vertex position. You may have one in vertex and the other in breech, both in breech, one in transverse one in breech or vertex and so on. So far your first one is lined up in the vertex position and it’s water has broken, the second one’s water will break during the delivery of the first . If the second one is in another position I can usually flip it into vertex. The point is that I need to make sure there are no complications for you, Dr. Jemma, or for your babies. Once you’re fully dilated then these babies will be born very quickly and if that means I have to reschedule my appointments, so be it, but I won’t pretend that your labor and delivery has no chance of  garnering high risk complications.”

Jemma got a confused look on her face and Leo looked between Jemma and Dr. Bailey.

“What do you mean by “high risk complications”?”, Leo asked, reaching for Jemma’s hand, fear beginning to circle at the edges of his mind like a pack of rabid wolves, lying in wait for the perfect moment to attack. Anxiety was like a dull pair of scissors cutting away at his calm outer layer, fraying it beyond repair as he clutched at his wife’s hand.

“It means that I may need to perform an emergency C-section, but only if the babies aren’t able to fit through her pelvic outlet or if something else unexpected happens, either way, it’s far too early to tell if she’ll need a C-section.”, Dr. Bailey said before reassuring the couple and leaving.

The midwife got up and checked Jemma’s dilation once more before leaving to go on her break, telling them to hit the call button if Jemma needed assistance.

The couple sat in silence for a while and Leo got the text stating that his mum had arrived and was asking to come back to the room. Jemma told him to text her back and tell her that, with all due respect, she’d rather have her own mum with her. Helen had understood perfectly and promised to keep them posted if anyone else arrived.

  Leo watched as Jemma crocheted the last few rows of the baby blanket before muttering, “I hate this…”, in a low voice.

“What do you hate?”, Leo asked as Jemma finished off the blanket and put it inside her bag.

“You might want to start recording this on your phone for posterity, I mean it too, start recording.”, she said and Leo pulled out his phone and started the video.

“Okay, it’s recording…”

“Okay then. I suppose I’ll list everything I hate right now… maybe this video will be the thing that’ll keep me on birth control until I hit menopause. Okay… The things I hate about being forty one weeks pregnant with fraternal twins. I hate how I haven’t slept soundly for months. I hate how the twins start kicking me every bloody time I lay down. I hate having my dignity checked at the door to every doctor’s visit. I hate having people stare at me wherever I go. I hate having strangers ask me questions like, “Ooh when are you due?”, “Can I touch your belly?”, “Boy or girl?”, “Blah, blah, blah…”. I hate the snide remarks that I get from people when I’m moody. I hate not being able to eat my favorite foods, I miss our take-away nights with my spicy Thai noodles and ginger peanut dressing, I miss being able to drink coffee and caffeinated tea, Lord I miss my breakfast tea… I hate having to wee every time I stand up. I hated not being able to have sex for the past three months because of how big I got and the fact that I have to wait a whole month and a half more before we can have sex again… it’s just too long a time without sex… Leo when I get the “all clear” from Dr. Bailey, expect me to shag your brains out for a week straight. I hate not being able to be in the lab. I hate not being able to wear my button down blouses with ties and cardigans and lab coats. I hate not being able to wear my Doc Martens and skinny jeans. I hate maternity wear. I hate having my breasts grow to an abnormal size. I hated gaining 24.9 kilograms… I went from weighing a mere 60.7 kilograms to weighing 85.6 kilograms. I hate having swollen feet and ankles. I hate having to sleep, or attempting to sleep, on the bloody futon in the den while you sleep upstairs on our nice plush mattress because there isn’t enough room for both of us on the futon. I hate having to sleep with a bloody bolster pillow because I’m too big to cuddle with you. I hate my hormones running amuck. I hate these bloody stretch marks all over the place. I hate not being able to climb stairs. I hate having to be assisted wherever I go! I hate this bloody hospital gown. I hate having my abdomen all exposed like this. I hate how all the nurse gave me to keep me decent was a blanket the size of a bloody tea towel! I hate the fact that I’ll probably end up tearing down there and have to get stitched back together!”, Jemma yelled, waving her arms about to emphasize her anger.

Then Jemma broke down in tears, her arms falling limply at her sides as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Her words had cut deep into Leo. He pitied his wife now.

Fatherhood may not come with an instruction manual, but he had had to give up a lot of things and make sacrifices during the past months, most of them were made out of respect for Jemma and were voluntary sacrifices.

 His voluntary sacrifices were nothing compared to the sacrifices that Jemma had been forced to make. He felt at fault for her suffering and, in a way, it was his fault, after all, he is the father.

Motherhood may come with instructions but the price was steep.

 Jemma hadn’t enjoyed a bit of the last months, she had been moody and irate at her best of times and she had snapped at the cashier at the store when he made a remark to Leo about pregnant women being hard to please.

Jemma had almost jumped the counter at six months pregnant and wrung the youth’s scrawny neck.        

Now she was sobbing uncontrollably and Leo was frozen in place, unsure of what to do because she had become so sensitive and she had developed an aversion to touch over the past nine months from all the people who had asked to feel her belly, so sometimes she didn’t like being touched at all.

She gazed at Leo with tears in her eyes.

“I-I never want to be p-pregnant again… you hear me Leopold?”, she choked out, shattering Leo’s heart with every tear-stained syllable, “N-n-never… I’ll do whatever I have to do, I’ll even get a tubal ligation or a full hysterectomy if you don’t want to get a vasectomy…J-just promise me that after these two, we’re done with kids okay? If I ever start talking about wanting more kids, cut me off and show me this video, do whatever it takes to talk some sense into me. I. Never. EVER. Want. To. Go. Through. This. Hell. Ever. Again.”, she spat, punctuating her words by slamming her hand repeatedly down on the mattress before collapsing in defeat and crying.

“Okay… No more kids… agreed?”, Leo asked, holding out his hand for a handshake, a gesture which made Jemma smile through the last of her tears.

She extended a hand and shook.

“Agreed… now do you want to play a card game or something? I have to get my mind off of things.”, she asked, wiping away her tears.

Leo nodded, stood up, and stopped recording before  moving to leave the room to search for a deck of cards.

“Hold on… Are you cold?”, he asked, noticing his wife shivering minutely.

Jemma ran her hands over her exposed abdomen and nodded.

Leo went out into the hall and got a nurse to bring a couple hot blankets and some socks to Jemma along with a deck of playing cards.

“Thank you…”, Jemma said as she snuggled under the blanket that Leo had carefully draped around her upper body, minding the epidural catheter line, and Leo slipped the socks on her feet and arranged the second blanket over her legs and abdomen.

They played a few card games and Jemma beat him every time. As the games wore on, Leo noticed how Jemma began to grow restless and distant. She eventually forfeited, telling him that she didn’t want to play anymore because it was getting harder to focus.

Leo noticed the uterine contractions monitor was beginning to spike.  

Jemma began having her contractions closer together and began to do the breathing exercises that she had learned at the Lamaze classes she and Leo had attended.

Dr. Bailey reentered the room.

“I’m sorry I was out for longer than I thought I would be, The babysitter who’s supposed to watch my daughter called up, telling me that she was ill and that she couldn’t babysit for me, so I had to go through my contacts, calling everyone I know to ask if they could watch her.”

“It’s okay…I’m fine, you did what you had to do…family first…”, Jemma mumbled as another contraction passed through her.

The midwife returned and then Jemma was moved to a delivery room.

Leo sat at the head of Jemma’s bed and encouraged her as she was instructed to push. Leo was thankful for the screen Jemma had requested be put up to keep Leo from getting too squeamish, especially when Dr. Bailey told Jemma that she’d have to do an episiotomy so she wouldn’t tear.    

  She began to cry again and get angry, cursing loudly, as her contractions got closer together.

“Breathe Jemma!”, Dr. Bailey yelled over Jemma’s endless string of curses, and she sucked in a breath before continuing on her tirade about how much she hated everything about being pregnant and Leo could tell that she had been withholding some of her more choice comments about the subject when he had been recording earlier.

“Keep pushing you’re doing beautifully!!”, the midwife remarked.

Jemma looked positively feral as she yelled, “SHUT THE BLOODY HELL UP AND DO YOUR FUCKING JOB!!”

Leo stroked Jemma’s hair and mopped the beads of sweat off her brow as she breathed hard and screamed through another contraction.

“The baby is crowning! Whatever you do, do NOT push until I say so!!!”, Dr. Bailey yelled as Jemma screamed.

“What if I have to? I need to push….”, Jemma sobbed as her head flopped back on the pillows and she tried to relax in the shortened length of time between her contractions.

“Pushing right now could inflict head trauma and cause permanent brain damage to the baby...”, Dr. Bailey explained.

Only Dr. Bailey was exempt from Jemma’s wrath, the poor midwife took the brunt of her anger but Leo was impressed as she seemed to simply let Jemma’s scathing words bounce right off of her (Leo later learned that she had been delivering babies for so long that she was used to laboring mothers yelling at her in anger and it didn’t bother her in the least).

“Push!”, Dr. Bailey yelled as Jemma’s next contraction began and she began swearing loudly.

“The head is out!”, The midwife shouted, “Now rest between contractions! You aren’t finished yet.”

Jemma began to scream instead.

Leo was reminded of Jemma screaming in the pod and the bolt of gut-wrenching fear that squeezed him like a vice only intensified as he realized that his PTSD had reared it's ugly head. 

A small, rational part of Leo’s brain told him to keep his mouth shut, but he made the stupid mistake of opening his mouth anyway.

“Jemma try to relax…”

Dr. Bailey and the midwife both looked up at him with wide eyes and shook their heads quickly as if to say, _“No, no, no, no, no! You’ll regret saying that! She’ll chew you up and spit you back out…”._

Jemma’s rage was focused on him now and he was certain that he was a theoretical dead man.

  “OH?!? RELAX?!?! THAT’S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY TO ME? LEOPOLD IAIN FITZ-SIMMONS, I SWEAR ON ALL THAT IS HOLY THAT IF I WASN’T NUMB FROM THE WAIST DOWN WITH A BABY’S HEAD HANGING OUT OF MY VAGINA, I WOULD KICK YOUR ARSE AND CASTRATE YOU FOR PUTTING ME IN THIS STATE!!”

Leo just stared wide-eyed at his wife whose seething rage melted off her face in an instant only to be replaced with a quivering lower lip and a deeply apologetic look.

“Oh God…Leo, I’m so sorry…”, she began sobbing uncontrollably, "I didn't mean it the way it came out..." 

“Make sure she doesn’t hyperventilate!”, Dr. Bailey yelled, “One more push Jemma, and you’ll be done with the first twin!”

Jemma nodded and gave that final push, delivering the baby before falling back on her pillows.

Leo and Jemma both looked at each other in amazement when they heard the powerful cries of their first child.

“Congratulations,”, Dr. Bailey said, “It’s a boy with a very strong set of lungs.”

Jemma gasped and the midwife exclaimed, “And it looks like baby number two is following right behind its older brother and is already in the vertex position!”

“Leo, do you want to cut the cord?”, Dr. Bailey asked, holding up his flailing firstborn who was covered in blood and God-knows-what with the cord still attached.

Leo felt the bile rise in his throat and he shook his head, quickly blinking away the image of his son covered in fluids.

“No, I’m very squeamish about those things… I’ll leave the cleaning off  and the cutting of the cord to you…”

A third nurse came and assisted Dr. Bailey with baby number one and Jemma gasped out, “Go… go see him… tell me if he’s healthy…”

Leo got up and walked over to where the nurse was taking the very first measurements and washing him off before slipping a nappy on and bundling him up in a blue blanket.

She looked up at Leo and asked, “Do you want to take him? His eyes are still closed but they’ll be opening soon…”

Leo murmured as he felt  his hands shake, “Maybe I should sit near Jemma… She’ll want to see him too… Maybe his presence will help the second delivery go smoothly…”    

He sat down near Jemma’s head and held his breath as the nurse placed the wriggling bundle into his arms.

Leo looked down at the baby in his arms, his _son_ , and a wave of emotion hit him as the baby just barely wrapped his tiny fist around his finger.

“He’s so small…”, Leo murmured as his son opened his eyes for the first time and blinked before opening them completely.

He was mesmerized by the baby and he realized as he looked into little honey colored orbs that were so much like Jemma’s that he had fallen in love all over again.

“He’s actually a little heavy for being a twin.”, The attending nurse commented.

“Can I hold him?”, Jemma asked and she took little baby Fitz-Simmons into her arms and laid him so that their bare skin was touching on their chests.

“He has your eyes Jemma…”

The third attending nurse helped Jemma move her gown and cradle him correctly so he could begin nursing.

Leo knew that newborns responded well to feeling the closeness of their mothers through skin to skin contact and that nursing was a baby’s first instinct after birth. Just watching Jemma slip into her role as a new mum so quickly was amazing too. He had no clue how she managed to do it, but apparently all those instruction manuals paid off.   

Jemma murmured a soft lullaby to their son as he detached and the nurse put a cloth on Jemma’s shoulder, instructing her as she rubbed his back gently before he burped and then he gave a tiny yawn before dozing off.

“Yeah they usually don’t stay awake for very long after being born…”, the nurse explained as she covered Jemma up again and took the towel away, “Sometimes they don’t even latch on and feed after birth, so you got lucky.”

“Jemma, you’re ready to start the second delivery, give your son to Leo.”, Dr. Bailey instructed.

“He’s sleeping so be careful not to wake him…”, Jemma said before pushing as the second delivery started.

She handed their son back to Leo who reclined back in his chair and held him against his chest, overcome with the sheer force of having a whole other life in his hands.

He was a father now.

This little boy in his arms would call him “daddy”.

“Push Jemma.”, came the hushed instructions of  Dr. Bailey.

Jemma pushed silently through, breathing steadily and biting her lip to keep from screaming and waking the baby.

“Jemma, I know this may be an inopportune time, but what will we name him?”, Leo asked as he pressed a kiss to his son’s forehead, “Should we name him one of the boy’s names we chose? Like David or Oliver?”

Jemma relaxed between contractions and whispered, “No… I have a much better name…”, she silenced herself as she pushed before continuing, “Name him after both our fathers… since your late father’s first name and my father’s middle name were the same… you can choose a middle name…”

Leo looked down at the baby in his arms and nodded.

“Okay, Robert Phillip Fitz-Simmons…”

Jemma pushed hard and gasped out, “That’s a very strong name… I like it… I think Coulson will be pleasantly surprised…”

“Jemma, stop pushing… the baby is crowning…”

She nodded and breathed steadily, whimpering a little and focusing on her son.

Leo was holding little Robert to his chest and he smiled as his son grasped the front of his scrubs in his tiny fist.

“Start pushing again, you’re doing wonderfully…”, the midwife instructed.

The attending nurse had Leo call the cord blood hotline to have both children’s cord blood banked as she cleaned the baby cleanup area for the arrival of the second twin.

Jemma pushed out baby number two’s shoulders and soon Dr. Bailey was telling her that it was time to deliver the rest of the baby.

Jemma whispered, “Finally.”, and pushed.

The cries from the second twin were a bit weaker at first but soon grew louder after the fluids were syringed out of its nose and mouth.

“Congratulations.”, Dr. Bailey said, “It’s a girl.”

Jemma cried again and little Robert woke up and began crying as he heard his sister’s first cries.

Leo shushed his son back to sleep and coddled him a bit more as he watched the attending nurse clean, measure, and slip a nappy onto his daughter before bundling her up in a pink blanket and placing her right into Jemma’s outstretched arms.  

Dr. Bailey and the midwife worked swiftly to deliver the placentas, bank the cord blood, and stitch Jemma up before giving her a tetanus booster shot and making sure her oxygen levels were stable. Jemma got their daughter to nurse and then burped her before coddling her.

Their daughter gurgled happily from Jemma’s arms and then she handed their daughter to the nurse as her epidural catheter was removed and they traded babies so Jemma could hold Robert again.

“She has your eyes Leo, but that might change in the coming months.”

Leo fell in love again instantly as he held the azure gaze of his newborn daughter.

“I want to name her something a little unusual, if that’s alright with you…”, Leo began and tried not to cry as his little girl wriggled around and made happy baby noises.

“No it’s fine…”

“I like the name Willow Marie…”, Leo said, “I’ve always liked the name “Willow” and Marie is my mum’s middle name.”

“It’s a beautiful name…”, Jemma said softly.

Leo found himself cooing, “Willow”, softly as his daughter drifted off.

They held their babies for what seemed like only seconds until the midwife announced that it had been an hour Jemma should be able to get up and walk around now that the effects of the epidural had worn off rather quickly.

The midwife took Robert as Leo rummaged in Jemma’s bag for her soft nightgown that did double duty as a nursing gown as Jemma got up and had the nurse help her to the bathroom with her IV stand.  Jemma was recovering quickly and she went to the bathroom on her own (on shaky legs with the condition that she leave the door unlocked if she did end up needing help, but she demanded that she have at least a minute of blissful privacy after not having a shred of privacy in the past several hours).

They were moved to a private room where Jemma would spend the night with the twins and Leo texted his mum, telling her that they (Jemma’s parents and the team had arrived and were in the waiting room) would be allowed to come in and see the babies after Jemma felt more like herself.  

Leo held both Robert and Willow when Jemma’s IV was removed and she went to shower on her own in the private bathroom.

Jemma returned and nursed both babies as she was triaged and given a clean bill of health.

Leo took Robert after shrugging out of his scrubs and burping him.

Then everyone came back to the room and cooed over the newborns.

“Grant? Skye? Jemma and I want to make you their godparents…”, Leo said after everyone got settled in on the sofa and chairs that sat against one wall.

The newly engaged couple agreed and then Leo’s mum passed a crying Robert to an awkward Grant Ward who took Robert carefully and then gasped as the baby quieted instantly in his arms and looked up at him with wide eyes.

“What did you name them?”, Skye asked as she fawned over little Robert as he was passed off to Phil Coulson, his surrogate paternal grandfather.

Willow was being held by Antoine and she was still making happy baby noises.

“Well, I named the boy with Leo’s help. His name is Robert Phillip Fitz-Simmons.”, Jemma replied.

Leo’s mum wiped her eyes at hearing that her long-deceased husband’s name was now the name of her grandson. Phil looked down at his namesake who was currently grasping his necktie with his tiny hand and smiled before May leaned over and removed his tie from his grasp, slipping her slender finger into his small fist and cooing softly to him in Mandarin.

“And what’s this happy baby girl’s name? Seriously though, this has to be the happiest and cutest little baby in the world.”, Trip commented as he passed Willow to her godmother, who was making funny faces and cooing to her. Ward smiled at the faces and noises Skye made at the happy baby in her arms.

“I chose her name,”, Leo said, “that’s our little Willow Marie Fitz-Simmons.”  

Everyone agreed that the babies both had wonderful names.

Two hours passed too quickly and soon the nurse was telling everyone that they would have to leave because visiting hours were  nearly over and because Jemma and the twins would just be discharged in a little less than twelve hours and needed their rest. Leo would go home and tidy up with his mum before they brought Robert and Willow home for the first time.

Jemma’s parents decided to get a room in a nearby hotel and the team would just be staying on the BUS for a while before taking off again.

Leo was the last one in the room with his exhausted wife after everyone else had left. His mum had gone off to pull his car around (she would be driving as Leo was far too tired to safely drive anywhere).

He kissed both of his babies goodnight and then he went to leave because Jemma had her eyes closed and her hands folded delicately across her belly and her chest rose and fell as she breathed easily, a slight smile on her face.

In his drowsiness, he had a sort of spell of PTSD, a condition that he had thought he had long since resolved.

He recalled the sight of Jemma lying motionless on the bed next to his the instant he woke up from his comatose state.

His coma had ended more than five years ago but sometimes he still woke up in the middle of the night with Jemma’s screams echoing inside his head, the image of her falling from the BUS seared into the front of his mind along with the memory of how much it hurt when John Garrett had lied to him during the Hydra takeover and basically told him that Jemma was dead.

He heard her screams of agony echoing in his head from earlier and found himself crying silently as he walked over to her side.

“Leo…”, she whispered and he looked down as she grasped his hand, “It’s your PTSD acting up again…”

It wasn’t a question.

He leaned down and cried into her shoulder, unsure of what he was feeling, all he knew was that he had fallen into a powerful void of emotions and it made him grasp Jemma tightly.

“I never want to hear you scream like that again… you hear me? Never…”, he whispered, pulling back from her to cup her jaw and look into her tired honey colored eyes, “I’ll go mad if I ever hear you scream like that again… promise me you won’t… I don’t think I could handle it…”

He scattered kisses across her forehead and down her nose, across her lips and pressed a few into her hair.

“Leo…”, Jemma murmured sleepily, “I’ll try my hardest not to… You’ll never hear me scream while giving birth again… remember… no more kids… two is enough…”

Leo looked at her in her eyes and whispered, “I love you… I love you and I never want to see you in pain again… I’m so grateful to you too…”

“I love you too, Leo… now I need to rest up… and you need to go home and sleep…you look exhausted…”

Leo kissed his Jemma one final time before murmuring a goodnight to her and leaving to get ready for what the events of the next day would bring, and as he completed another chapter in the theoretical book of his life, he prepared to begin working on one that would last him the rest of his life; Fatherhood.

He wasn’t so afraid anymore.

 

               


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Leo tells Jemma he loves her and the one time she said it first...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own anything!  
> Thank you for your support and I hope you enjoy this last chapter!  
> Again, all mistakes are my own.

**Epilogue**

* * *

“Mum…Dad…do you _really_ need to do all of this?”, whined the groom, his expression of annoyance quickly turning to one of surprise and awe as his father came forward with a box.

“Dad… is that, you know, _the_ brooch? The same one that was passed down over the years?”, he asked, his eyes widening in recognition as his father opened the box and took out the brooch. 

“Hold still, Robbie.”, Leo said with a smile as he carefully pinned the fly plaid onto his oldest son’s shoulder and adjusted the large silver brooch with the giant emerald on it.

“I’m almost done here…”, Jemma murmured as she frantically brushed off the lint from their son’s jacket.

Leo and Jemma stepped back and looked at their oldest son.

Robert had grown up to become the spitting image of Leo aside from his auburn hair and brown eyes. He had inherited those physical traits from his mother. He and Willow were geniuses just like Leo and Jemma, only they were mainly musically talented instead of scholastically talented.

Leo and Jemma’s other three children were named Iain, Elizabeth, and Johanna, respectively.

Needless to say, Leo and Jemma’s plans for not having any more children after the twins had been shot to hell when they realized how quickly the twins were growing up. Jemma had worked out a lot after the twins were born so she was in top shape and exercised throughout her other three pregnancies, even giving birth quicker and without as much pain. The receptionist at the hospital that first time had been correct, the first birth was the most difficult one, after that, it got relatively easier.  

Robert looked at himself once more in the mirror before turning back to look at his parents.

“Well? How do I look?”, he asked.

Jemma rushed forward and embraced her son.

“You look just like your father did when we got married. Just as handsome… Abigail is very lucky…”

Jemma turned to Leo and smiled, creases forming near the corners of her eyes as she adjusted her glasses.

Jemma had aged gracefully; her auburn hair was now streaked with silver, laugh lines had formed from years of smiling, and she had a few scars on her body from a few lab accidents and surgeries. Leo had also aged; his hair was totally silver but it still formed those unruly curls, he also had his fair share of wrinkles and scars from accidents and his few surgeries, but his posture was still straight and his hands could still work wonders on complex machinery despite the onset of arthritis.   

Jemma and Leo would both be turning sixty-one this year and they had just celebrated thirty years of marriage.

But today was Robert’s wedding day and in a little less than an hour, Leo and Jemma would welcome Abigail Albright into their family.

Leo hugged his oldest son.

“I wish that Grandmamma Fitz, Gran and Grandpa Simmons, and Uncle Phil and Aunt Mel could’ve seen this…”, Robert murmured quietly.

Both Leo’s mum and Jemma’s parents had passed away over the years as well as Phil and Melinda Coulson (who were married in a D.C. courthouse two weeks before Skye and Ward were married).  Their deaths had been difficult to bear, but Leo knew that none of them would’ve wanted their memories to be marred by feelings of sadness or grief, and that was what helped him get through the dark days after they passed on.

He knew his mum was happy to finally be reunited with his dad and he knew that Jemma’s parents were happy to be able to always watch over them from heaven. He also knew that Phil and Melinda were glad to be able to finally rest in peace, goodness knows they deserved it after the busy and high-risk lives they led.

“They would’ve loved to see you…”, came a voice from the doorway.

Skye and Grant Ward entered the room with smiles on their faces and open arms, closely followed by Antoine and his wife Christine.

They exchanged their congratulations and then Grant, Antoine, and Skye started telling Robert about Leo and Jemma’s wedding day.

Willow poked her head in the door a little while later.

“Hate to break up the family reunion, but my brother here has to go get married.”, she said with a smile that was identical to Robert's.

Willow had grown into a beautiful young woman who was built along the same lines as Jemma but had Leo’s blue eyes and a mane of honey colored curls. She was currently single but had been engaged at one point  (Leo hadn’t liked the man at all) but her fiancé broke it off with her because he wasn’t faithful. Poor Willow was heartbroken for ages and had actually moved back in with Leo and Jemma because she and her ex fiancé decided to move into his flat and when things went sour between them, Willow took her stuff and moved. Willow was now living in her own flat with her two cats and focusing on her work.

Robert had made Willow his “Best Woman” because she was his twin sister and his best friend, but Willow had played along and wore a black sheath dress with a length of the Fitz tartan pinned to one shoulder, that way she would at least look uniform with the rest of the wedding party. 

Leo and Jemma took their places in the church after letting Robert and Willow go off to the groom’s lounge with Iain as Elizabeth and Johanna came out with the bridal party.

They took their seats next to Skye and Grant and all their kids, both adopted and biological, and waited for the ceremony to begin.

Leo glanced at Jemma during the ceremony and she sniffled a little as Robert and Abigail had their hands fastened together, said their vows, exchanged their rings, and said their “I do’s”.

Leo clutched his wife’s hand as the minister pronounced Robert and Abigail husband and wife and in seconds, he saw the events of Robert’s life go by, from the moment he came into the world until now.

Suddenly, Leo was filled with sadness because he was no longer the young man he once was. His children had all grown up and had lives of their own. Their youngest daughter had just celebrated her twenty second birthday a few weeks ago and moved her possessions out of the house and into the new flat that she shared with her best friend.

Jemma was still there to support him as always, but he worried for her a lot (even more than he had before), especially because she had been in the hospital for a hip replacement and there had been a complication during the procedure which caused her heart to stop. It was by a stroke of luck that the doctors were able to quickly revive her, but the fact that she had come so close to leaving him was enough to shake him to his core. Jemma was no longer the young woman that she once was and he had to accept that. Even if his dying day was a few decades down the road, he still had to face the fact  that he had lived a long and full life. All he could hope for was that the rest of his days would be spent with Jemma by his side, just like she had been for the past forty-something years.

He looked at his wife and realized that if it hadn’t been for the woman sitting beside him today, his Jemma, he wouldn’t have made it this far.

He tried to imagine where he would be today if he hadn’t run into her at the Academy orientation, if they hadn’t become friends in front of that fountain on that warm day in late summer in 2002.

He couldn’t.

Jemma was such an important part of him that now, just like in that pod where they were trapped below 90ft of water, he couldn’t live if she didn’t.

He may not have had the courage to tell her then, but he certainly did now, just as he had for the past thirty four years; ever since he woke up from that coma.

He leaned over and whispered, “I love you.”, into Jemma’s ear and watched her face light up with that timeless smile of hers and felt the warmth of her very soul overflowing as she whispered, “I love you too.”

They left the chapel and walked up the hill to the reception, hand in hand with smiles on their faces and love in their hearts.

Leo pressed a kiss to Jemma’s forehead and silently thanked the powers that be for giving him the life he had.

He promised her that he would spend eternity by her side.

And Leo Fitz-Simmons has always been a man of his word.

“Jemma, does it feel like the time has flown by?”, he asked softly.

“What do you mean?”, she asked.

“Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday that I met you and it feels like I’ve watched my life go by in a haze.”

“It does feel like that sometimes…”, she began but her voice faded away before she could finish.

Then Leo noticed the colors around him begin to bleed together and become a blur.

Jemma kept talking but he couldn’t hear her and she remained normal while the world around him melted away. He vaguely became aware of a faint beeping that grew in volume as if it was coming from the back of his mind and moving towards the front with every passing second.

He tried to call out to her for help but no words came out of his mouth.

Then the colors faded into bright, blinding white.

_Was this what death felt like?_

Leo focused on Jemma as the beeping grew louder and tried to hold onto her and call her name in vain as she too faded to white. The last he saw of her was her ageless smile before she was gone.

The pain was real and he felt it in his chest, his head, and, for some strange reason, his left arm.

Soon the only things he had to  keep him company was the steady beep that wouldn’t fade, the pain in his body, and the blinding white light that he couldn’t block out, even if he closed his eyes.

As suddenly as the blinding white light and the beeping started, those things began to fade away. The pain was reduced to a dull ache.

A wave of warmth spread through his body and he became aware that he was laying down.

The beeping grew softer and the whiteness became black.  

He began to be able to feel his body again and that meant that he had the power to move, and if he had the power to move, that meant he could open his eyes and talk.

He tried to open his eyelids them but they must’ve weighed several tons each and something was in his throat and keeping him from speaking so he decided to settle for wiggling his fingers and toes.

Perhaps the sharp pain of his arthritis would prove that he was still alive.

Before he could wiggle them, he heard something new through the fog that was congesting his head and muffling the beeping noise.

His heart skipped a beat when he heard Melinda Coulson’s voice speaking softly through the haze, breaking through quickly.

But Melinda had been dead for nearly six years… so surely he was dead too…

Her voice became stronger and he could make out the words she was saying.

“…You just need to come back… I know I’m not one for emotion and that you still have some mixed feelings about me… after all, I _did_ try to shoot you with the ICER… I’d be cautious too… but you need to wake up because I feel like this is my fault… I shouldn’t have sent you and Simmons to spy on the BUS without backup… Simmons is being very strong right now… I sent her to her room to eat, shower, and get some much-needed rest… She hasn’t left your side since you’ve been here… Poor girl, the last three weeks have been nothing but a waking nightmare for her…”, Melinda paused and let out a rare, sarcastic laugh, “I know how hard it is to watch from a distance as your best friend turns into the one you love and then watch as someone takes your place… that’s how it was for me when Coulson and Audrey were dating… I recognized jealousy in your actions every time you were around Tripp…”

 _“Jealousy?”_ , he thought to himself, _“Why would I be jealous of Tripp? He and his wife have four amazing kids and Jemma and I are the godparents of two of them. Wait a second... Audrey Nathan? She was that cellist from Portland, the one we saved from Blackout… Coulson never mentioned her again after that except to say that he was moving on from her and that was years ago. Melinda knew that Jemma and I were married and had hyphenated our names...it's been years since she called Jemma by her maiden name alone...”_

“But you need to wake up… Simmons… no, _Jemma_ needs you to wake up… I know how you feel about her… I’ve known since she was infected with that Chitauri virus… she feels the same way about you which is why she needs you to wake up and be okay…”

He heard Melinda sigh and felt her hand squeeze his hand gently before her hand moved away.

“We all need you to wake up and be okay…”

He heard the sound of a water bottle being opened and then heard Melinda drinking from it before she was silent.

Now was the time to try to move his fingers and toes.

He focused all his power onto his fingers and toes and felt them move without a hint of the arthritis.

He heard the beeping pick up speed and he heard Melinda shift.

“Fitz? Can you hear me?”, she asked.

 _“Yes! I can hear you!”_ , he wanted to shout.

He wiggled his fingers again and this time the action was easier. His toes were moving too.

 _“Alright…now let’s try opening my eyes again…”_ , he thought and focused all his power on his eyelids, forcing them open and then screwing them shut against the garish bright lights, only catching a quick glimpse of a much younger (and very much alive) Melinda Coulson.

“Oh my God…”, Melinda murmured in amazement before he heard her run out of the room and yell for a nurse.

 _“Jesus… they have a call button for a reason…”_ , he cringed internally as the loud yell made his head hurt.

He heard the squeak of shoes on linoleum and there were suddenly the voices of many people speaking rapidly over one another, fighting to be heard, their voices growing in a maddening crescendo. He was too occupied with the splitting headache he had to realize that he was being triaged and only realized that he was being touched when he went to sit up and two pairs of hands pushed him back onto the mattress gently, and two voices instructed him to relax and remain still.

He obeyed and felt like he was going to be sick when he felt whatever was lodged in his throat being removed.

 _“That must have been a ventilator…”_ , he thought as he gagged and coughed, sending pain shooting through his ribs.

The people placed a nasal cannula in his nostrils and he inhaled deeply before coughing again because his throat was drier than the desert.

“Good, he’s breathing…”, one voice said.

“Blood pressure is stabilizing…”, came another.

“Prepping a  new IV drip….”, stated another.

“For fuck’s sake can you get a water bottle for him or something, he’s probably parched! He’s gonna re-injure his ribs at this rate!”, Melinda yelled.

The beeping grew rapid, matching his heartbeat.

He was surprised to hear the usually calm and collected agent raise her voice and curse.

Soon he felt a straw at his lips and took slow sips of the cool water, feeling instant relief as the liquid ended his coughing spell.

The voices around him faded and people stopped prodding him and he heard people leave the room gradually before he heard three pairs of feet skid to a stop.

“May, what’s going on?”, Skye asked and he heard how young she was.

 _“Since when does anyone call Melinda by her maiden name? We all started calling her Mel shortly before Jemma and I got married…”_ , he thought.

He remembered that he was married to Jemma and then his left thumb moved to touch his left ring finger and the beeping picked up in tempo when he felt a cast on his left arm and then the beeping raced faster when he found that there wasn’t a wedding band on his ring finger.

Was nothing the way he remembered it being?

“His pulse is increasing…”, Tripp said, “Fitz, man, you have to calm down or those nurses will come back and give you some really strong pain meds to knock you out again…”

_“Tripp! He sounds so young…”_

Leo focused on steadying his breathing and the beeping slowed.

“May, did he open his eyes?”, Phil asked.

_“Okay, that’s definitely not right… they’re both dead!! Phil wouldn’t call his own wife, alive or not, by her maiden name…”_

“Yes… Is Simmons--”, Melinda began before she stopped abruptly and Leo heard someone sprinting at full speed down the corridor and skidding to a stop in the room.

“I came…as fast as… I could…”, came the familiar sound of Jemma’s breathless voice, “Is he…okay?”

Leo’s heart soared when he heard his wife ask about him.

He slowly opened his eyes, squinting in the bright light until it was shielded by Jemma’s hand.

Even with the cannula, he could smell her herbal shampoo, something she hadn’t had in years since the company that made it went bankrupt.

 _“How can she smell like that when the company making it has been out of business for twenty years?”_ , he wondered.

He was getting very worried now.

He opened his eyes the rest of the way and came face-to-face with a much younger version of Jemma.

He gasped and flinched away in shock before his eyes adjusted and looked around at younger versions of Skye, Antoine, Phil, and Mel.

He looked back at Jemma before testing out his voice.

“Jemma?”, he whispered hoarsely before he coughed and she offered him his water and he sipped it carefully, his eyes darting around, lingering on  his left hand and noticing the absence of a silver wedding band, wrinkles, scars, and years of calluses.

Nobody had wedding bands, yet all of them were supposed to be married.

 _“I’m supposed to be at my son’s wedding reception!”_ , he screamed internally.

“Take it easy Fitz…”, Jemma murmured, pushing an auburn lock of hair away from her face.

“Where am I?”, he rasped.

The group shared a look and Jemma replied, taking a seat, “You’re at a secret SHIELD base called the Playground…”

Leo looked at Mel and Phil.

“You mean I’m not dead?”, he asked, his voice gaining a little more power.

He sounded so young.

“No…”, Skye replied, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, nothing is as I remember it…”, he began, “Where’s Grant?”

Skye’s eyes welled up and she blinked the tears away quickly, her features hardening and she responded coldly.

“Grant Ward is in prison because he betrayed us all and almost killed you and Simmons…”, she stated before getting up and leaving the room.

_“Grant’s in prison? For betraying us? There must be some mistake…he got out of prison for the Hydra mess in January of 2015...”_

“Fitz… do you know what year it is?”, Phil asked.

“Well I woke up in 2014…”, he began.

Mel looked at Phil and then back at Leo and replied, “That’s the year and all, but why the usage of past tense? You’re waking up _now_ … it _is_ 2014…”

Leo looked at Jemma for some sign of truth in Mel’s words and she nodded.

“How old am I?”, He asked, as if to get some concept of time.

“You’re twenty-six years old.”, she replied with a worried tone in her voice.

“I know I was born on  December 29th, 1987... I know where the Playground is…But I don’t understand…”, He replied.

“What don’t you understand?”, Jemma asked.

“Well, I don’t know how much sense this’ll make to the rest of you, but to me, 2014 was thirty-four years in the past…”, He replied, “I’m not twenty-six… I’m sixty… It’s supposed to be May 22nd, 2048 and I’m supposed to be at a wedding reception… I’ve already woken up thirty-four years ago and lived for thirty-four years… I’ve got gray hair and I’m old and I have arthritis in my hands... I’ve lived…”

He looked around and knew that he probably sounded insane by the looks that his friends were giving him.

“May I speak in private with Jemma?”, he asked after a tense beat of silence and Tripp, Phil and Mel left the room.

“Fitz, what do you mean when you say that you’ve lived for thirty-four years?”, she asked, “You’ve only been comatose for three weeks…”

Realization dawned on him and his heart shattered as he realized that he had only dreamed about living.

None of it had been real.

He never woke up to see Jemma lying beside him in that hospital bed. He never kissed her on the lips. He never proposed to her. He never married her or made love to her in that honeymoon suite on their wedding night at Dunrobin castle.

 The house in Edinburgh was a product of his imagination.

He didn’t have five children with Jemma.

At least  his mum was still alive.

The thing that hurt the most was knowing that Robert, Willow, Iain, Elizabeth, and Johanna weren’t real.

He never held his babies or watched them grow up.

Jemma had never been pregnant.

It was painful to think about and he didn’t even realize that he was crying as he thought about his whole life as a dream.

Jemma (the _real_ Jemma) used a tissue to wipe his tears away.

“I dreamed it all up…”, he admitted, “I dreamed up thirty-four years of my own life…”

Leo shook his head and laughed in spite of himself.

“I should’ve known something wasn’t right from the off… there’s no way that life  could ever be _that_ good to someone…”

“This coma dream might have been a side effect of the pain medicine we gave you so your broken ribs wouldn’t hurt so much…”, Jemma took his hand and said, “And it felt like years when it was only a few weeks because that’s how dreams work. It’s like that one time at the Academy when I fell asleep over my notes and woke up a half hour later in full panic mode because I thought I was going to be late to class… Since you’ve accepted the fact that you were dreaming so well, I suppose we should talk about it then… to help you get over it…”

“Okay…”, he took a sip of his water and cleared his throat, “I s'pose that's for the best. I mean, you’re a big part of my dream after all…”

Jemma smiled and blushed, “I am?”

Leo nodded, “Yes, you are…”

“How big?”, she asked.

He thought about how to tell her just how big her part was.

“You were the first thing I saw when the dream began and the last thing I saw when it ended.”, he replied before meeting her gaze, “That’s how big…”

“In the dream, what am I? Am I your friend or something more?”, she asked, holding his hand.

He spoke boldly, holding nothing back.

“In the dream, you’re my best friend, my companion, my partner, the love of my life, my girlfriend, my fiancée, my wife, a daughter in law to my mum, the mother of my children, godmother and aunt to Skye and Grant’s kids, godmother to two of Tripp and his wife’s kids, aunt to the rest of them, my equal in our job at SHIELD, and a mother in law to our oldest son’s wife…”, he paused and looked at her surprised face.

“I never thought…”, she began and looked down, blushing profusely, before looking back at Leo and smiling widely before asking, “In your dream, we were married? How many children did I—did _we_ —have?”

“Five.”, he replied easily.

She gasped and smiled, “Really?”.

He nodded fearlessly.

“What are their names?”, she asked, tears welling up in her eyes as her thumb caressed his hand.

“Their names are, in the order of their births: Robert Phillip, Willow Marie, Iain Alexander, Elizabeth Antoinette, and Johanna Helen. You were only pregnant four times… care to guess which two are twins?”, he asked and she smiled, blinking as a few happy tears trailed down her cheeks.

“Leo…”, she murmured and pressed her lips to the back of his hand, “I’m so relieved that you’re here and you’re alive…”, she inhaled sharply and continued, “If you hadn’t made it… I don’t know what I would have done…”

She broke down and cried, clutching his hand for dear life.

Leo soothed her by gently reminding her that he was alive and here.

“Jemma, I should’ve told you sooner about my feelings for you… I shouldn’t have waited until I felt for sure that I was going to die to show you how I felt about you… I can be a real coward sometimes…”, he said, but Jemma cut him off as she stood up and leaned over the bed.

In an instant, her lips were on his and although Leo’s mind told him that this wasn’t  the first time she had ever kissed him on the lips, that she had done this loads of times in his dream, his heart and body knew that this was the first time she had  actually kissed him.

He kissed her back, hoping that the emotion he exuded through the kiss would show her how much he loved her.

Jemma broke off the kiss first and smiled, her eyes even warmer in reality than in the dream.

 Leo knew that he would have to give up comparing the dream to reality, no matter how hard it might be.

Hell, he had the courage to tell Jemma the truth about his feelings, all he needed now was the strength to let the dream go.

He opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her but Jemma beat him to it.

“I love you, Leo… do me a favor and never even so much as _think_  about becoming a martyr so that I can live because I never want to have to wake up by your bedside with you in a coma after a night terror and have to be sedated because my half-conscious mind thought you were dead…”

He nodded and tried to remember something romantic he said to dream Jemma, but found that  the dream was fading away in some spots as they tend to do, so he focused on Jemma, the real Jemma, and smiled instead. It would take some time to get used to having her around him like this as more than a friend, especially now that all of this was really happening and wasn’t just some side effect of a strong pain medicine.

“I love you too…”, he said and cupped Jemma’s jaw, tipping her head ever so slightly so that he could kiss her again.

Soon the two of them were sitting next to each other in Leo’s hospital bed, watching Doctor Who, and whispering their I love you’s in between kisses.

As time went on and Leo and Jemma’s relationship grew stronger, the dream faded to a shadow and there became certain parts he forgot altogether, but the dream didn’t matter that much to Leo anymore.

He had Jemma and she was what made his life worth living.

If  Leo had to condense his life after the coma into three simple words, he wouldn’t hesitate to reply,

“Living the dream.” 

* * *

_ ~The End ~ _

 

 

 

_ Or is it.... _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your continued support and if you want a sequel, maybe I might get around to writing one (or at least multiple one-shots within this headcanon) but only if you all beg me for it (because my free time is very limited)!! So tell me what you think in the comment box below!

**Author's Note:**

> I love hearing from you guys, so leave me some kudos, comments, and bookmarks!!


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